With parenting, comes poop. Changing poopy diapers. Using the word poop like you would any normal respectable word. Inspecting poop, counting how many times a day your kids poop. That’s right folks, poop. There have been many Mommy poop adventures for me. I’ll name my top most memorable poop events.

First up, my Mom came up from New Jersey to watch the kids. I was working at home on a Friday, and was on a work conference call. My phone was on mute, as I listened. My daughter, Evie, comes barging in to my home office saying she pooped. I yelled for my Mom to help, no answer. It was just me, on the phone, on mute, asking my potty trained daughter about 7 times, incredulously, why she pooped in her underwear. I think I then tried explaining a few more times why she should get to the potty and not poop her pants. Now, remember, I said I was on mute on my work call. I was so incredibly caught off guard by this poop event that I didn’t notice the awkward silences and inflections in voices of those speaking on the phone line. I stared my phone’s screen, the mute button. I was not muted. The work participants on that call had heard more than they ever needed to know about toddler poop.

Then, my maternity shopping poop extravaganza. I was at an upscale maternity store. This was most likely a sign I shouldn’t have been there in the first place. Anyway, this store has a nice play area for the kids to enjoy while mom-to-be waits in line to buy her clothes–great. My daughter was happily playing in that area as I talked to the cashier who was pregnant with her first, I was pregnant with my second. As the cashier was talking and taking clothes off of the hangers I glanced back at my daughter. I was horrified. Brown smears all over a section of that pristine play area and on her one hand. She stood like a statue. The look of, “uh oh”, on her cute little guilty face. I turned to the cashier and calmly, quietly, asked if there was a bathroom I could use. She gave the standard response, “not a public one”. “Wrong answer,” I thought to myself. I feverishly motioned in the direction of my daughter. The cashier’s look now matched that of mine.

Not surprisingly, they did have a bathroom/closet. It was tiny, I washed my daughter off in the tiny sink, found a garbage bag to toss the poopy clothing situation into, found bleach wipes. I disinfected the tiny bathroom and the play area with those wipes, as innocent mom-to-be bystanders blankly stared at me. I wish I could’ve interviewed them, at that moment. Because no Mom really knows what they are in for in the realm of poop. Gives me something to look forward to, with number 2.