Poop, Pooper, Pooping

I could post about how wonderful our Christmas was or how great it was to be home as a family with Eilish for almost 3 weeks but instead I'm going to tell you a little story about the worst day of parenting Owen and I have had thus far.

It is all about the poop.

So, Eilish is a pretty good pooper. Stuff goes in, stuff comes out, no big whoop. Last week Eilish had been trying to poop for about a day and a half and nothing was happening. She had eaten a lot of junk over the holidays after developing a taste for After Eight chocolates. You couldn't help give them to her as after each bite she would declare it 'delicious'. We were pretty lax with her diet over Christmas and paid the price.

We put her to bed after nearly 2 days not pooping and heard her cry out after about an hour. When I went upstairs she was laying on her side crying and…straining. This next part is not for the faint of heart so scroll down for a cute picture and we'll forget this post ever happened.

I pulled off her diaper and saw would can only be described as an alien life form trying to make it's way out of her butt. I had honestly never seen her bum look like that before but to be honest, I've never caught her mid poop. Anyway I reached in and tried to remove the poop, only to leave a sizable amount still in her. That's when Owen arrived. For those of you who don't know, to say Owen has a weak stomach is putting in mildly. He is known to gag even wiping the kid's nose. We took her out of her crib and put her on her change table where she continued to cry and strain, it was heartbreaking. I started running around, crying myself at this point looking for some Vaseline. It was then determined by someone other than myself (Owen) that my carrying on wasn't really helping anyone (Eilish) and that I should just hold her hand, kiss her face and let the professional (Owen) get to work. And work he did. Using a Q-tip he chiseled away at the poop until Eilish passed what legend would refer to as 'a man sized shit'.

After she was cleaned up and still whimpering she looked up at her Mom and Dad who were at this point up to their wrists in her excrement and said, 'downstairs?'. So at 10:00pm downstairs we went and read book after book until she was ready to go back to sleep. It was our hardest and finest hour of parenting to date and we spent the rest of the night buzzed about our poop adventures.

2009 has started off as the Year of the Vegetable as Owen and I pretend to like all the vegetables we're feeding Eilish. She doesn't actually eat the green beans or (shudder) broccoli that we put on her plate that we pretend to enjoy ourselves, but what she does not know is that veggies have been added to everything she eats. I've hidden broccoli in rice and green beans in meatloaf. I'm like the Vegetable Whisperer and although she can't articulate it, I know her bum thanks me.