Friday, September 13, 2013

Colorful School Days & a Park Poop

So my kindergartener has been getting into trouble lately at school. Mostly he finishes his work, gets bored and gets chatty. Really chatty. He had his first "red day" at school this week.

His school uses a color-coded behavior chart type of discipline/encouragement and here's a little of how it goes:

Green = good/neutral, everyone starts off on green
Yellow = bad, note home
Orange = worse (I was unaware that orange existed until this week), note home
Red = really bad & a chat with parents

So that's from acceptable to bad. But then there's...

Blue = better than good
Purple = super good, great even!
Pink = pretty much unattainably good! You win the behavior chart! Or something...

It's all pretty confusing. I think I really just got the hang of it this week, mostly because Simon has been a few different colors. I emailed with his teacher and we've hopefully found a way to help. Mostly, Simon (and a few other kids) will be given extra busy work allowed to practice their "word wall words" when they finish their work. I even let Sime pick out a brand new little notebook to take to school for this.

Another thing that will hopefully help is rewarding him if he stays at green or above all week. Simon's teacher suggested this. Since he had a bad last couple days, this morning I told him if he got above green today, we would celebrate. The kid got all the way up to purple (super good, great even!). So to celebrate we got McDonald's for dinner and had a picnic at the park.

Yay, right?! Well, so far this post has only focused on one child. Enter Charzie, my newly potty-trained two-year-old. She's been constipated/refusing to poop for the last three or four days. She had a few painful poos and got scared of going. I gave her stool softener. Then I got some prune juice. She wouldn't drink the prune juice. Then I found the right mixture of prune juice + apple juice + water so that she would drink it. She drank quite a bit of it today. I also gave her half of a FiberOne bar. Then she finally pooped! Hooray! She worked up quite the sweat and it was rock hard (yeah, too much detail, I know, but poop is a subject frequently mentioned here). So I was relieved that I wasn't going to have to deal with poop at the park now! Or was I?

Yes, yes I was. And not just Charzie's...

The kids and I were mid-McD's picnic when Charz announced she had to go potty. I thought it would be a quick pee-pee but it turned out to be a big ol' poop. This one was much easier to push out, I could tell. She had gotten like four days worth out in an hour! So we wiped, flushed, washed hands and went back to our McD's picnic. We cleaned up, took our toys & drinks to the van, then went to the playground. We'd been at the playground maybe five minutes when Charzie announced that she once again had to go potty, just pee-pee. Simon & Jonas also announced that they had to go potty, too.

Since the main doors to the bathrooms were open and there was someone else in the women's room, I let the boys go pee in the men's and told them to come stand outside the women's when they were finished. As I was helping Charz, I smelled something stinky. I looked down and saw she had some remnant poo in her panties. I don't think she even realized she had gone, it was more of a shart really (when you pass gas and a little something extra comes out...), but poo nonetheless... and I had left the diaper bag in the van. Then I heard Jonas' poop song, the one where he sings to the world that he just pooped. Did I mention that I had taken the kids out for this picnic alone? Yeah...

I yelled to Jonas that he would have to wipe himself because I couldn't go in the men's room. All the while people were walking by and going in and out of the bathrooms. I wiped Charz up as best I could with the cheap toilet paper. I got her undies and pants off. Thankfully her shirt was long enough to cover her. We washed hands and I wrapped her messy stuff in a paper towel and walked out to see Jonas standing at the door of the men's room with his shorts & undies around his ankles. He looked at me and said, "I pooped, Mommy."

So I picked him up, took him to the women's bathroom, wiped him, flushed, had him finally pull up his shorts, washed hands and headed to the van with both boys and a pants-less Charzie. Got her cleaned up and put fresh undies & pants on her and we went back to the playground even though I really just wanted to go home.

We were there to celebrate Simon's "purple day" and had only played for five minutes before Poop-fest 2013 happened. So we went back and played. Both boys bonked their heads. Charz threw a fit because she wanted to do things big kids were doing, but we stayed. And we saw some friends! Then we went home, I gave the kids a bath and got them all ready and put them to bed.

One would think I would have learned by now that at least one child always has a poop incident whenever I take them all somewhere by myself, right? But if I did, I wouldn't have as many amusing stories for you, then, would I?

2 comments:

Anglican Mama said...

Poopfest 2013 made me laugh so hard, I feared waking the husband who is passed out now. :) You are super mom, I would have been ready to go home, too! So glad you persevered and Simon got his celebration picnic. :)

Alisha said...

Thanks, Jen. I'm glad to give you a laugh!