Friday, August 31, 2007

We couldn't make this crap up!

Well, we experienced a first today. Tasman tried to eat her own poo. Too much information, you say? You bet! Nevertheless, I feel that it's my duty to report this kind of thing. (Okay, I promise, that's the last puerile poop joke.)

From time to time, Tasman gets a bit of diaper rash, like all kids do, I suppose. When she has a particularly bad one that lingers, we give her some "naked time". Oh, how she loves naked time! While she's getting a bath from Mommy, Daddy is downstairs laying out old towels all over the floor of the living room. Then we bring her down and let her streak around the room with wild abandon. We don't worry too much about her bodily functions during naked time; that's what the towels are for.

So here we are watching "Last Comic Standing" from last week on the DVR, and suddenly Kirsti shrieks. I look over in time to see Tasman quickly drop a—how shall I put this?—"Lincoln log" that she had just been holding in her hand. Neither of us had witnessed the original deposit of said stool. Kirsti just happened to look down as Tasman picked it up to examine it and decide if she thought it tasted yummy. It all happened so quickly that Kirsti couldn't tell if Tasman had managed to swallow anything.

Of course, we were immediately concerned about the effect of ingesting fecal matter. Kirsti asked me to look it up on the internet. I opened up Google, but then wisely paused for a moment to consider the potential ramifications of conducting a search involving people eating poo. I finally decided that if I included the word "toddlers", I was less likely to get . . . well, you get the idea. So in my Google search bar I started typing "toddlers" and then "eating". The Google search bar, as some of you might know, takes what you type and immediately starts to offer suggestions for common search queries similar to your own. Not surprisingly, "toddlers eating habits" comes up first, but I was shocked to see that "toddlers eating feces" is second and "toddlers eating poop" is fourth. Apparently, this is a more common problem than I expected.

Unfortunately, none of the first few hits gave us much useful information. I did learn the word "coprophagy", but that didn't really help. On the plus side, we came across a site that sells the T-shirt seen in the image above. I can't imagine what kind of parent would put their kid in it, but it's hilarious anyway.

In the end, we just brushed her teeth as well as we could and put her to bed. I suppose I'll find out tomorrow if there are any problems. It could be worse: I remember not too long ago watching an episode of "Nanny 911" that featured a three-year-old who liked to stick her hand down the back of her diaper, and then fling her poo all over the house. At least Tas didn't try to throw it at us, right?

1 comment:

Tyrna said...

Well nobody else seems to have wanted to comment on this post, so I will be the first to go there. I think Tasman should feel lucky that her parents are kind enough not to get her this shirt. You should remind her of that every time she defies you or expresses discontent at you being her parents during her teenager years "Well at least we didnt make you wear that poo shirt!" Okay, maybe not then...