Nothing a few M&Ms can't fix

Every year around Mother's Day, Salary.com has been releasing a study of how much stay-at-home-moms should be paid based on the various jobs they perform. Among the duties listed in our job description are cook, nurse, daycare provider, janitor, teacher, etc. The one job missing from the list is hazardous materials specialist.

It has been another poopy week for us. It all started about 2 weeks ago when, to my best guess, Bear was a wee bit constipated, had a painful poop, and decided he was not going to be doing that again. Thus began the proclamations of "My tummy hurts, I have to poop - NO, I don't have to poop!" Despite our best efforts, we just could not coax him into pooping and after a couple of days he would not even consider sitting on the potty. 5 poopless days later we went to the doctor, who assured us that this is normal behavior for this age and sent us on our way with a suggestion of adding Miralax to his juice until the situation resolved itself. Lo and behold, an hour after finishing his laxative-laced apple juice, Bear did indeed sit down on the potty and produce approximately 5 days worth of poop. Problem solved. Or not. Bear, who has been writing new scripts for himself like crazy, had already decided that the potty is really optional. It was another 2 days before we saw any more movement, and then nothing again for nearly a week.

Funny thing about poop, you can only hold it for so long before it starts coming out on its own. At first we started to see evidence of an impending poop in his underwear, then little bits in the bathtub. Then the floodgates really opened. Skid marks turned into mudslides at a rate of 2 or 3 a day, each accident taking a half hour of clean up time and requiring a full wardrobe change. At one point Bear said "I don't feel good. There is something in my bottom." "That's poop" said I "and it needs to come out. Poop goes in the potty. If you don't sit on the potty, it will come out in your pants." "Then it's going to come out in my pants." said he. And sure enough, out it came at school an hour later. He came home with 2 plastic bags - one full of clothes, one full of poopy underwear - and a report from his teacher that she found him hiding under a pile of pillows. Bear may not care about the uncomfortable load in his underwear or smelling like skid row, but at least he has the good since to not want other people to know about it.

The fix was so simple I am ashamed that I didn't think of it earlier. M&Ms. The same bribe we used to potty train him in the first place. All it took was 2 M&Ms to get him back on track and then he seemed to get right back into the swing of things. Of course I have thought that before.