Dear Neighbor

[Note: if you have eaten anything in the last few hours, or else get easily disgusted by references to poop, stop reading now. I mean it. Do yourself a favor.]

Dear Neighbor,

I know you were a little surprised at the sight of my two young boys pressing themselves up against the glass of the patio door in their proverbial birthday suits. Surprised and -- I could see it in your eyes -- worried and shocked. A little embarrassed, too. I apologize. You really weren't meant to see that. But my three-year-old pulled the blinds off the ceiling this morning, you see, and it couldn't be helped that the windows were bare.

Why were they butt naked at all in the first place, you ask? Trust me, you'll wish you hadn't asked rather soon, but I shall answer you anyway. You deserve an explanation. As with most good tales, of course, this one has a back story. (Ha! I revel in the pun-ny irony of that statement! But I'm getting ahead of myself...)

It all started yesterday, you see, when my son had leftover pizza for breakfast -- and consequently ate more in one meal than he usually eats in an entire day. And then he had lunch and even, when a cousin of ours treated us to dinner at a restaurant in Greensboro, a rather large dinner, too. My boy ate more in one day than he usually eats in a week. You may think I exaggerate, but I do not.

Fast forward to this evening, twenty minutes before you witnessed that shocking burlesque at the windowpane. My son announced that he had to poop. He sounded a little frantic about it, but since he has been solidly potty trained for a full half-year, I wasn't worried about that little detail as he scampered off to the bathroom.

Until I heard the shrieking. Oh, the shrieking! He shrieked his way down the hall to announce to me that he had poop on his leg. And indeed he did, smeared all over both calves, coating both feet, and now tracked all over the floor. And he was still pooping -- plop! plop! -- onto the floor.

So I ran him, by this point a sobbing, frantically maniacal mess, to the bathroom and placed him as gently as my adrenaline-pumped senses would allow onto the toilet seat. He didn't stop screaming, because he felt the humiliation of being covered in poop quite keenly. I think he was just taken by surprise at the sheer volume of poop that was pressing on his rarely-exercised bowels from yesterday's endless feasting.

Are you still with me, dear, beleaguered neighbor? Well, if you do not think this tale is yet maudlin enough, it was at this point that my 18-month old son reminded me of his presence. He walked into the bathroom -- walking through piles of dung to get there -- with something brown, warm, and delightfully squishy in his hands, and asked me with the charmingest smile you ever saw: "What dat, Mommy? What dat?"

When I did not respond as calmly as he had hoped, he ran, crying and smearing his treasure along the walls, as quickly as he could out of the bathroom as I chased him down.

So I scrubbed my weeping sons down in the bathtub for a full ten minutes before I was satisfied that they were clean enough, and left them, screaming uproariously in the tub, as I commenced the work of tracking down the mounds of youknowwhat that covered the entire house. And if, somewhere along the way, they stopped crying, let themselves out of the tub, and ran to stare brazenly out the patio window at you as you walked your dog on the lawn, then I am sorry that they embarrassed you. It's just that I had other things on my mind, and my hands were full. Literally full. Of crap.

Please forgive us.

Thank you for your understanding,
Kirsti