Kids are gross.

A few days ago Elisabeth pooped in the tub during her morning bath.  The tub in my parent’s house is quite deep, so bathing her is a two-person job.  I stand in the tub to clean her and then hand her off to one of my parents to dry her off, lest I kill myself trying to get both myself and the wet, wiggly toddler onto dry land.

So there I am, scrubbing her down, and she poops.  Now baby poop is nothing new for me.  But baby poop in the tub is.  It totally paralyzed me.  “Uh, I don’t really know what to do about this,” I said to my dad, waiting to dry Elisabeth off.  Then I realized I was standing in the poopy water and quickly extracted both Elisabeth and myself from the tub.

At that point, you kinda think, Well, that’s the grossest thing that’s going to happen today.  But then it isn’t.

Hours later, I noticed the house had gotten eerily quiet, which obviously meant trouble.  I found Elisabeth in my parent’s bathroom, dunking her sippy cup in the toilet, and then drinking from it.  There you have it – something grosser than a little poop in a tub.

I thought I was off the hook when it came to icky-kid stuff – Elisabeth is a total priss.  The first (and only) time I tried finger-painting with her, she had an epic meltdown as soon as her hands touched the paint.  When we went to Hawaii last Christmas, she was terrified of the sand.  And the water.  And the grass.  When we visited Nagano for a ski vacation, the snow reduced her to tears.  I figured her for an indoor girl.

Finger painting fail. This was actually before she launched into full meltdown mode.

Refusing to let her feet so much as touch the sand.

Angry we even tried to get her in the water! Look at the disgust on her face!

Crying because we put her on the grass.

Crying because we put her in the snow. We are so mean.

Whenever she gets something (food, usually) on her hands, she reaches her hands out to me, completely disgusted by the utter filth that is covering her.  “Eh! Eh!” she whines.  Translation: Get it off me!  And if I don’t wipe her down quickly enough, she has another meltdown of finger-painting proportion.  Should she find so much a fleck of dust on her clothes, she picks it up and hands it to me to dispose of.  “Trash! Trash!” she says.

I’m no neat freak, but I fully supported Elisabeth’s clean streak.  This meant no messy crafts, no playing in the dirt or mud, and way down the line, no camping trips.  She was a girly girl, just like me.  Thank goodness.

But I’ve come to the disappointing realization that being a girly girl does not preclude grossness.  It does not prevent pooping in tubs, or drinking from toilets, or picking up worms.  (That also happened… Ick.)

So now I need to man up and deal with the all the yucky stuff that is probably coming my way – who knows what Elisabeth has in store for me.  And I should probably invest in stronger cleaning supplies.

Your turn – what things have your children done that totally surprised and disgusted you?  Please tell me I’m not the only one whose child has drunk toilet water.