by Erin Kathleen

Created on: May 06, 2008   Last Updated: October 31, 2008

If it were a child's job to make their parent's laugh, my children would be expert professionals. I went into this whole parenting thing with cold feet, empty hands, and absolutely no idea what to expect. What I have ended up with has been the most amazing adventures, hilarious stories, and memories that could not be scrubbed away with the toughest scouring pad known to man. While many of those memories involve poop, quite a few entail some undisclosed parts of the body. The poop stories are those that can be shared with a heart-felt laugh and a sigh of remembrance. The others, however, produce nervous chuckles and uncomfortable pauses. Take the time my five-year-old slipped in the dining room, for instance. She was chasing her four-year-old sister around the table when she slipped and fell right on the hard wood floor. With the sound of a thump and a cry, I rushed over to her to ensure that no bones had been broken. After asking where the boo-boo was, she replied with an answer that stopped me in my tracks. "It's my penis mommy. I hurt my penis."

As she had fallen, her foot had slipped up under her bottom and she landed hard. Just a couple of days before, she had witnessed her baby brother's diaper change and had inquired about his differences. I had simply explained that since he was a boy, he had a penis. Apparently, she didn't quite catch on to the whole, "since he's a boy".

I guess I should throw in one of my best poop stories while I'm at it. It was shortly after my youngest daughter had caught on to potty training, but she hadn't quite mastered going "number two" yet. Instead, she would fill her diaper and come running to me in disgust so I could clean her up. This day, however, she went poo in her diaper and decided not to tell me. I was sitting at our computer desk, oblivious to the hilariousness that she was about to set off. Next thing I know, she comes running in holding one of her plastic forks with a poop stuck to the end of it. "Mommy, you want some chocolate?!" Commence hysterical laughter from both her and I.

Like I said, my children have a way with humor. Whether they are shouting out haphazard ideas about boobies when we walk past the bras at a department store or painting poop murals on the hallway walls, they are forever keeping me in a happy medium of both comically entertained and awkward amazement. Either way, this parenting thing turned out to be pretty okay by me.

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