Where's the $@#% Is the Poop!?

I have always tried to be careful to watch my language around the children, and it now imperative to do so with both of them repeating the things they hear people say. Once, after dropping a cup of milk, I let the c-word slip and moments later heard Kara let loose a string of "Cwap! Cwap, cwap, cwap!"s. Not long after that Nathan started giggling and repeating his sister. Soon both kids were laughing hysterically and belting out the hilarious new word that they didn't even know the meaning of. I bit my tongue to keep from laughing as well and explained as calmly as I could that we don't use that word and Daddy shouldn't have said it. Luckily, I've not heard them say the forbidden word since then, but I was close to using it (or worse) this morning while looking for the very thing the term refers to.

Looking for a turd is part of our regular morning routine around here, as it would typically be contained in a diaper. Or sometimes the poop actually makes it into the potty, as we are currently working on with Kara. Toilet training has gone pretty well except for going No. 2, at which time she runs and hides. If I can find her and get her on the potty quickly enough, all is fine and dandy. If not, she usually pops out and asks to have her diaper changed. However, when she told me that she pooped and I felt her diaper, it didn't seem that anything was in it. I checked to be sure, and sure enough there were faint traces of fecal matter but no actual poo to be found.

I led her to the potty and encouraged her to finish her business there. Then I started to ponder the situation. We have had one or two instances before when the excreted bowel movement had escaped form our daughter's training pants, and I then began to worry about where it could've gotten to. The skid mark was sort of near the edge of her Pull-Ups, so it seemed possible that we had a potential refugee hiding out in our living room somewhere.

Let me say that I searched high and low for that poop. I pulled out all the toys out of the bins, checked and doubled checked every, single, possible hiding spot downstairs, and moved every piece of furniture, in case it had rolled out of sight behind or under something, all the while sniffing as deeply as I could inhale through my nose. Still, I could not find the wayward feces in question.

After almost 20 minutes of searching with nothing to show for it while my children watched me in confused wonder, I gave up and decided that Kara must have started going and instead decided to not finish pushing and instead saved it for the potty, just as we have been talking about. I am fairly confident that is what happened, anyway. After all, I couldn't find any traces of the missing poop, either visual or olfactory, and she actually did put some in the toilet.

Still, I can't help but wonder if one day, when we are moving and packing up our belongings, we'll find a mysterious, shriveled-up, little brown stone that maybe has a slight odor to it. We'll wonder about it is for a little while before remembering the missing poop and getting nostalgic for the time when our daughter was just a toddler learning to use the toilet on her own. Then we'll quickly drop what would then be pretty much be a coprolite in the trash and promptly wash our hands.