Tree House Fun

Two days ago my friend told me she had to ground her son for an afternoon. He had been on the roof with his dad when his dad got down for a minute. When the dad got back on the roof, he found his son peeing down the sewer vent. I had a pretty good laugh as she told me the story. I have long since learned not to be smug about these kinds of things and I was NOT thinking things like, “If you just did a better job teaching your child…” or “Why can’t you control your child?” But I was thinking something like “Tee-hee! At least something like that hasn’t happened to me!” Well Julie, one day later and I can top that.

Yesterday my 4 1/2 yr old daughter came into the house with her head hung low and said to me, “I’m sorry, Mom.”

“Sorry for what?”

“I pooped.”

“What?!”

“I pooped.”

“Aaaar! Where did you poop?”

“Grass.”

At this point I think I yelled something like “I’m going to kill you!” Guy, in an attempt to calm me down and comfort his penitent daughter, intervened by saying things like “Was it an accident?” and “Did you try to come inside and you didn’t make it?” She of course answered “yes” and “uh-huh.” I finally got control of myself and then began asking more questions.

“Where is the poop?”

“Outside.”

Right. I gathered that from the grass answer. I was going to have to be more specific because my daughter was not volunteering anything more than she was asked.

“Okay. Show me”

She took me into the back yard under our big sycamore tree. Sure enough, there sat a little pie on the grass. It was time to learn more details.

“Did you get any on your underwear?”

“No.”

“Did you pull down your pants and sit right here and do it?”

“No.”

“Then how did this get here? Where were you when you pooped?”

“Tree house.”

I looked up. There, sitting on the branched trunk of my tree, were more little pies.

“You were up in the tree house when you did it?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Grrrrrr.”

After more of this questioning I finally pieced together that she and her friend Cammie (3 1/2 yrs) were playing house and apparently two of the slats of the tree house floor looked like a toilet. My daughter was playing at using the toilet, and then I guess the urge got to her before she could get down the tree and inside. When nature calls…

After reminding her that we don't pretend to use toilets in tree houses, I sent her inside to get in the tub while I set to cleaning it up. My husband had some remarkable ideas like “Just throw it in the bushes—the cat goes in there” and “just squirt it until it dissolves away.” I reminded him we were talking about human fecal matter and I think I said something like “Just go away if you can’t contribute any useful suggestions.” He went inside and started fixing lunch.

I proceeded with the revolting task of scraping what I could up with paper towels and then hosed the tree house, the trunk and the grass down. I thought of bleaching the whole area, but I wasn’t sure how the tree and lawn would have done with that. As I was finishing up a half an hour later, Guy opened a window and told me to come in. He told me I was going to have to call Cammie’s mom because he wasn’t going to do it. I asked him why I needed to call her. He said that our youngest (2 1/2 yrs) had come to lunch and said “I going to poop on Cammie.”

“What?”

“I going to poop on Cammie.”

Long pause…why would he say this…“Wait a minute. Did Cammie have poop on her?”

Apparently she did, but she had cleaned herself up with a wet-wipe. Great. Now I had to call my neighbor and tell her that my daughter pooped on her daughter and to put her into the tub quick. Nice. And this isn’t just any neighbor. No, this is the neighbor who keeps tabs on everything and everyone on the street and makes sure everyone else has the scoop, too. We call her Neighborhood Watch. (Really, I could write a whole blog just on her. Maybe I will.) Anyway, now Neighborhood Watch knows what my daughter did to her daughter. And you've probably already heard this story by now.

After I got off the phone I started wondering something else, so once again I asked my daughter.

“How did the poop get on Cammie?”

“Fell.”

I guess Cammie wasn’t in the tree house at the time.