Bunchland

Meri Perra blogs about the challenges she and her partner face in trying to raise their girls with feminist values

Years ago, I returned home after a brief holiday to an unmistakable odour.

What’s the polite way to say it? One of my cats had had “grooming issues” while I was away. And “somehow” this had missed the attention of his caregiver. Or perhaps said caregiver chose active denial rather than deal with the grossness of what was happening. You can’t really blame her.

I remember taking the cat and a pair of scissors to the washroom and spending an hour removing a hard ball of several days worth of poo from between his legs. To add to the story, this was a cat whose stench-ridden poos made your eyes water on a good day.

Afterwards, I did what any sensible young woman would do. I called my mom for moral support. If it’s possible to be traumatized by grossness, I was pretty close.

I said, “I think I’m ready for parenthood now. I just did something so gross.”

My mom, in her wisdom said, “Meri, that’s way more disgusting than anything a small child could ever do.”

Though it wouldn’t come for several years, my mom’s words made me feel more confident that, I, in my more responsible future, could indeed tackle the challenges and grossness of parenthood.

Now, four years into mommyhood, I think that my mom’s desire for grandchildren may have trumped her moral imperative to tell the truth. Like my cat’s poo ball, parenthood has some gross moments.

That being said, it turns out, my own kids don’t do any of the things mentioned in a recent Toronto Star article about how to break your kids gross habits. But we’ve had disgusting things happen. And I’m doing what any responsible mom blogger would do. I’m posting them online. Wait for my next post, it’ll either be about ethical stuff to say about your kids online, or how to really tick off your partner by talking about private stuff on the Internet. It’ll be one of those.

1. Eating ear wax. This is our four-year old’s latest. Rosa, who has been picking out her outfits with a keen fashion sense since she was 18 months old. Rosa, who refuses to wear running shoes, period. Rosa who brings her purse with her to daycare, every day. It’s as though she has to counteract the girlyness with one disgusting habit. How do we know she eats her ear wax? She tells us, every time. It’s freakin’ disgusting.

2. Finding … things. Kids put stuff in places. Sometimes the stuff goes bad. We once found a moldy slipper in the compartment of Lileith’s toy truck. She’d put it in after it had been washed, still wet, and we’d been looking for it for weeks. We’re lucky we haven’t found any dead creatures. Yet.

3. Spitting it out, putting it back. I’m sure my kids aren’t the only ones who’ve done this. There’s that stage, when toddlers don’t like something, and out in goes in mom’s hand. If you catch it. When you don’t, there’s the putting the chewed up orange slice back on the communal plate, which is gross.

3. The dangers of sleep-sharing, part 1. We read about sleep-sharing before we embarked on this “if you don’t do it, you think these parents are crazy” family bedroom adventure. It’s a situation that’s worked for us. Mostly. What sleep-sharing guru Dr. Sears doesn’t mention is what happens when stomach flu does. There was the night I raced upstairs, and knew puke had happened before I got into the room. I picked up little Lileith, miserable and sick, cleaned her up, and was about to put her back to bed. But something was wrong. I knew I had to woman-up and turn on the lights. Turns out, most of Lileith’s vomit had gone on her sister. And there was Rosa, still sleeping, unaware that she was totally covered in her sister’s vomit. Needless to say, Rosa came down with the stomach flu one day later.

5. The dangers of co-sleeping, part 2. This is not a lesson I needed to learn. When potty training goes awry, waking up in pee is better than waking up in puke, but it’s still gross. Dr. Sears never warned us about this one either.

Meri Perra is a community worker-turned-journalist living in Toronto’s Riverdale neighbourhood with her partner and two daughters

Photo by lantzilla via Flickr