Poop-tastrophe

Well, I am beyond thrilled to share our first contributor piece. The response to and for this little project has been overwhelming, and has brought me such delight over the past couple of days. Please make sure you share the page, share the Facebook Page, and also make sure you follow us! So, without further ado I present Genevieve.  - Caitlin

Genevieve  is mommy to two kids and one of the bloggers from That's What She Crafted.  She spends much of her week keeping her busy household running as smooth as she can while dashing back and forth from various volunteering tasks at her kids' schools.  After the kids are asleep,  she fullfills the itch to be crafty through sewing or knitting while binge watching a variety of movies and shows.  Each day is a task in trying to find her inner super mom and taking it one "hurry up we need to leave NOW!" at a time.

Poop-tastrophe

For those of you who have read Caitlin's "I Guess I Write Now", you'll know that there was an incident with her youngest and poop. That was her version, and her take on the delights of having a three-year-old with a mind of his own... Now for the very first time you'll get the other side because, that's right folks she was at MY house when this poop-tastrophe occurred.

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Just a quick back story on our friendship - as you know Caitlin is an Army wife, living the nomad life. Me? Not a military wife at all... an Air Force Brat once upon a time, so I understand the dependent side of being a military nomad. I did not marry a service member, yet we move just like they do. My husband is an engineer, and in our 10 years of marriage we have moved 5 times! This does not include the times I moved "back home" to teach on my own during our first year of marriage. Some of you will remember that teaching jobs and the recession didn't mix well. 

In January 2016, we moved to the brown, drab, and desolate desert of the Southwest from the green, perfect lushiousness of the Pacific Northwest. Can you tell that we missed all the green and water?  We knew basically no body. My oldest was in kindergarten, and I ended that school year about the same amount of people as when we first moved to the area. 

Then fall happened - a new school year, and a new routine! We walked to school like we planned, and what do you know? There's this nice other mom who didn't mind making awkward small talk with me! She wore Doctor Who leggings to pick up, I thought oooohh!! someone who could share in my geekiness! She then sealed the deal she wore Harry Potter leggings - she is a Slytherin, but my Hufflepuff heart accepts all, or maybe my Ravenclaw brain knew she wasn't one to let run away. We continued the small talk branching into chats about fandoms and then one day she gave me a post-it note with her name, number, and permission to text "whenever."  Pretty sure we didn't even make it back to the house before texts were flying back and forth.

In any case that was the beginning of the beautiful, but awkward, first friend I made at my kids' school.  It didn't stop at texts, we shared kid birthday's together, went on that elusive forth base mommy date, cried when our husbands were yet out of town again, and had dinner at each other's houses. It was perfect.

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We were in the honeymoon phase of our mommy love affair - she even ended up moving down the street from us. We could yell (or text) from our driveways at each other that the garage door was open, or that the dogs were out!

Then we, really I should say I, ruined it... We decided to up and move. Just 8 hours away, but none the less move away. Before we moved away for good we decided on a last hurrah; this was to be an end of the year pizza party with water balloon fun, but life got in the way and we had to cancel. See my mom died, fuck cancer, and through it all Caitlin was a text away. She armed with lemon bars and a solid shoulder to cry on. The end of May was absolutely traumatic. Yet, I needed some fun too and so did my kids.  So, pizza party was back on for June once we returned from funeral services and taking care of various things. 

Pizza day arrived, and it was the first thing I had been truly excited about. Caitlin was bringing Sangria. I had 200 water balloons filled for the five kids. Homemade pizza dough was made the night before, and toppings were in little bowls ready to top dough and get shoved in the oven. We ate. The kids changed into suits and played their hearts out. The grown ups relaxed, chatted, laughed. It really was the perfect family affair. Then the youngest three, ages 3, 4, and 4, decided they weren't going to wait for me to fill the last few water balloons. They wanted to play upstairs in our loft. Cool. Here are your clothes, change, have fun. Big kids, ages 7 and 8, continue to play with the water balloons and squirt guns. Grown ups still blissfully enjoying each other's company. We can hear the kids up stairs playing with the Hulk hands and Duplos. 

Then the big kids are done outside, and come into to change. Suddenly, all hell breaks loose, and my oldest is calling down from the upstairs bathroom, "Umm guys? Can someone come help me?" All grown ups stop, look at each other, and wonder why the seven-year-old needs help?  I call up, "No you can change on your own."  He responds, "Ummm but there is poop on the toilet."

Now, if I could have had a camera and snapped Cailtin's face it would have been the perfect face for utter panic. She knew it was her kid's poop. She. Just. Knew. She BOLTED up the stairs as the other three grown ups in our group sat staring at each other.  Then we heard, "Honey get up here!"  At this point I assumed there was probably poop all over my bathroom.  Toilet, sink, cabinets, floor.  I mean that was the tone of the "get up here".

So her husband goes up, comes back down, and confirms there is poop. So, what can you do? I dash upstairs with some Clorox wipes to see her looking back at me with pleading "OMG how is this happening" eyes with her three-year-old in front of her as she tries to strip him down. The poop, the toilet and the floor? No big deal. Not for this former cloth diapering mama! Poop is poop. I ask about clothes and if she wants a bag for his clothes or to toss them. She asks for baby wipes to clean him down. I laugh and tell her to use the tub and the handheld shower head. Now she's hosing down Tiny.  Her husband and my husband are wiping things down. I'm grabbing clothing of my 4 year old daughter's that might fit and end with a bright yellow "bike for dad" shirt from Thailand, striped undies, and I think pink shorts.

In all of this there is laughter as we discuss how now our lives are forever sealed by poop. For my husband next security clearance, they will be asked, "How well do you know this family?" And they can respond, Poop Level. We are Poop Level friends - we've been in the poop trenches together and made it out. The kids continued to play, and we brought her blood pressure back down with another glass of Sangria. 

Overall, maybe not the perfect evening for us all, but looking back... maybe it was. I mean this was  poop-tastrophe June 2017, I know there will be other poop-tastrophes in my life time. I mean I'm a mom - sh!* happens. This is the one that sealed a friendship between two families, one that is sure to survive the distance from this move, and the moves that are bound to happen in the future.  We will never be more than a phone call or a text away. 

Currently, I'm waiting for her and her brood to come visit. I mean we bought the house with a huge basement for people to visit right? Or if she decides on a mommy vacation and have the basement all to herself, totally game for that too. Maybe our kids can get into some different sort of -tastrophe but at least be in it together!

- Genevieve

My Secret...

In hind sight, I can maybe, kind of, sort of see why POPSUGAR didn't want to publish this. Yet, at the same time... I feel like I cannot be the only one that feels this way. Statistically, it would be an impossibility for me to be the lone person in this category. Now that the holiday has come, and passed, I feel even more comfortable posting this...

Alas, I present another failure - may it make to laugh a bit, and send it off to the people in your life that would appreciate it the most.  

There’s One in Every Family

As Halloween drew to an end, I began to notice Christmas décor popping up in stores. The inner sigh I heaved was as deep as any I have ever heaved… Christmas before Halloween is just wrong. Yes, there is such a thing as decorating too early for Christmas. Yes, there is a “war on Christmas”, but it’s not exactly what you are initially thinking. My war on Christmas is strictly to keep Christmas in December, where it belongs. I don’t want sparkly trees, elves, and the fat man to show up while I am pigging out on small Snicker bars, and wolfing down mini-KitKats! I just don’t. At the beginning of November, I saw people hanging Christmas lights up. I heard some local radio stations playing Christmas music! Discussions of how many Saturdays were left before the big day arrived kept popping up in radio ads. As I deep eye rolled over this I realized, and not for the first time, that I am a Grinch.

There is one in every family.

I am the one in mine.

This actually doesn’t bother me the older I have become. I hate Christmas. There, I said it… I hate it. I won’t lie, pictures on Facebook or Instagram of the piles of presents under people’s Christmas trees make me want to shout profanities. Is it a status symbol to be able to fill the entire underneath of the Christmas tree? I hate it. I hate feeling like I have to buy Christmas gifts. To me, it cheapens what Christmas really ought to be about, and no amount of colored lights, loud singing, or candy canes make that feeling go away. Because I am pretty sure that is all my kids care about, and I am sure that is all your kids care about… the freaking Christmas gifts.

I usually wake up dreading all the bills we will have to pay come the first of the year over all the toys we had to buy for our children. There is nothing more brutal than trying to keep up with Black Friday ad’s, Toys’R’Us commercials, and the children’s little friends whispering about how awesome all their many things are. Last year at Christmas we were visiting family, and I literally cried as I bought Christmas gifts for everyone. It was so bad, that I washed my hands of buying Christmas gifts ever again. My husband is now in charge of gifting at the holiday, and it is honestly the best choice I have ever made.  

As a parent, I always find myself walking a fine line between spoiling our children rotten, and giving them the bare minimum. My oldest is old enough to thoroughly understand the concept of embarrassment, and jealously. As a young girl, there were very few Christmases full of the flurry of brightly colored paper; there were very few Christmases were I felt a feeling of abundance. I don’t want my own children to feel the feelings I have about Christmas, but I also don’t want them to expect the world offered to them each Christmas morning.

Furthermore, I am not sure Santa is really a great idea either. Don’t get me wrong, Santa is a’coming to our house, but I don’t think I like Santa. There is something about a giant fat man crawling down the chimney, peeping to see if you are sleeping, and then leaving gifts that just screams Horror Genre. Then he flies away on his sled pulled by eight tiny reindeer? Please. It’s a believable as the damn Elf on the Shelf… which we do have, and is currently riding in the Millennium Falcon that lives on top of the kitchen cabinets.

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The good news is, I am extremely good at faking Christmas cheer. Even more good news is for every Grinch like me, there are literally dozens of others that are exclaiming their love for Christmas from the roof tops… literally, in the form of their many colored lights, and animatronic deer set to Jingle Bells. I guess I am glad for that, because otherwise the world would be pretty drab around Christmas if we were all Grinch’s.

I probably won’t ever like Christmas, but I will continue to fake smile my way through the many renditions of Frosty the Snowman, Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer, and The Little Drummer Boy. I will trim the Christmas tree in grumpiness, hang the stockings with care, and then wrap the gifts. I will always be an active participant in the season, despite hating it, because I love my children and I love my husband. My hope is that they will remember that, like the Grinch, I was there year after year to catalogue, critique, and be present for each Christmas. I’m their Grinch, and I think they need me around just as much as I need to be around… because nothing makes a Grinch more of a Grinch than being left out.

Btw - your welcome.