Poop Never Fails

When I began this blog a couple of years ago, I never intended for it to become a dumping ground for poop stories and experiences. But when you're a stay-at-home father of a toddler, and you already have a proclivity for poop (when I was in college, I wrote a short story called "The Wad"--though not for any class, of course), well, I guess some things just happen.

As a middle school teacher, poop was a wildly popular way to rivet attention of my students. I could use poop to get my students interested in a book, a story, a thesis essay, or even a grammatical exercise.

As a high school teacher, poop was, undeniably, still a valuable go-to player when the class seemed to be sleeping no matter how hard I tried to build a bridge between my passion and theirs.

And as a college instructor, teaching an 8am section of Freshman Comp, yes: even there poop could perform wonderfully to suggest to my students that if they arrived within the first three minutes of class time, they might hear a funny (and true) story about Mr. Reynolds and poop.

So, call it like-father, like-son, or just call it what it is. But, today, the nap saga continued. Tyler may be going through some growing pains, he may be having some nightmares, or it may be some separation anxiety he's developing when it's time to bid goodnight for a late-morning snooze-a-roo. Or, alternately, he may just be moving out of the nap phase.

Whatever the case, today was shaping up to be another battle. His shrieks were telling me: Daddy, please, for the love of all things beautiful in the world, DON'T MAKE ME DO IT!

As I once again sang the sweet syllables of that classic hymn "Amazing Grace," Tyler's contribution was, well, not quite as amazingly graceful as has been the pattern prior to the past few days.

So, when I finally plopped him into his crib, and he stood there looking at me with a face drizzled with tears and red eyes, I caved.

Call me a softie. Tell me that Tyler has me wrapped around his littlest finger.

This may very well be so.

But instead of closing the door and dealing with another twenty minutes of shrieking, I decided to try my old ally, my longtime companion, my great friend who has never before let me down.

Poop.

I left Tyler's room and told him that I had a surprise coming back to him to help him feel happy-happy-joy-joy while he went to sleep.

He caught some of his tears and responded, through heavy sobs, "What--sob, sob--is it--sob, sob, sob--Daddy?"

"You'll see!" I said with evident glee at my opportunity.

I went into Jen's and my bedroom, opened up my sock and underwear drawer (no, this isn't going quite where you think it is, but not too far from it...) and I grabbed one black sock. It was from a pair that had been given to me by our neighbors as a Christmas present. The sock has a graphic of Bart Simpson on it wiping his bum with a long piece of toilet paper.

I went back into Tyler's room, the coveted surprise in my hands.

I proceeded to bend down, give him the sock, and then tell him a very detailed and vivid story about a young boy learning to use the potty for the first time, as his Daddy and Mommy watch him. Many plops and splashes later--and after some of the movement falls ont he floor--the boy's tummy ache is all better, and he smiles with pride as his newfound skill.

Tyler: laughing like crazy.

Me: Goodnight, precious boy.

Tyler: calm.

Me: Thank you, Poop.

Butterflies Shrieking

This morning, Tyler and I went along with another stay-at-home parent and her daughter to Tropical World. Just outside of Leeds, the place is packed with butterflies, meerkats, turtles, parrots, and snakes. Tyler darted from one display case to another, while his friend, Alice, did the same.

Every view of every new animal was a magical one. Whoa! Meerkat eating something!

Hey! Butterfly on pineapple!

Yellow snake sleeping!

Turtle playing hide-and-go seek!

It's hard to watch two kids so amazed by animals and not also be amazed, too. It's hard to watch two kids jumping, smiling, laughing, and not be amazed. It's hard to watch two kids and not be amazed. Period.

But after we had made it back home to York, bid farewell to our friends, and made the five minute walk back to our home, the amazement turned into...well...not so much amazement.

Nap time, you see.

Tyler and I both tend to need our naps. Him because his little body is so frantically engaged in any activity while he's awake that it needs a little snooze to help him get through the full day and continue on his endless path of amazement. (Yesterday morning, for instance, he spent a full twenty minutes hanging off a green bench in the park trying to see if he could reach various branches. All it takes is a bench and a few branches and voila: a magical game.) I need the naps because they provide those pockets of time to flip open the miniature screen of my e-book, open up the current writing project (or this blog, or, okay, e-mail) and type away. Bang the keys. Watch the words form little congregations and then watch those congregations sing some songs.

But today, the transition from butterfly kingdom to nap world wasn't so smooth.

The shrieks started when we began singing our nap-time songs. As I attempted, "Good Night, Butterflies," Tyler's acapelo version sounded more like: "Aaaaahhhhhhhhh! EEeeeeEEEEAaaahhhhhhh!"

Me: A-MAZE-ING GRACE, How sweet the sound...

Tyler: EEEEEaaaaaHHHHHHH!  NOOOOOOOOO!  No!

And so we sang.

When I finally gently placed him into his crib, said I loved him and kissed his forehead, it felt like the battle was already lost. As he gripped my hands (No, don't make me lay down on this pillow and sleep! How COULD you!?), I silently prayed, Lord, help! Him! Sleep!

Twenty minutes later and and two texts for support and prayer to my wife, Jennifer, Tyler was sleeping peacefully.

Dreaming, perhapss, about butterflies.

Amidst the naptime saga of today, beauty emerged. Yes, I am going to write that (perhaps) over-dramatic, corny-ish, tending towards making the microcosm of Tyler's room in York a macrocosm for understanding something bigger about life and about the world.

See, I can't help it. Because one of the things my remarkable wife write in a text of support was this: "Dreams do not have to be perfect bubbles floating just beyond our reach, but rather can live imperfectly among our daily realities."

I know. That's what I thought. Pretty stinking cool words.

She doesn't know I'm sharing them with you all right now. But I know that she won't mind, because I think they can bring the same kind of encouragement and support to you as they did to me.

So naptime didn't go great today. No perfect bubble floating there.

But the saga of struggle for napping doesn't diminish the beauty of the butterflies. And in fact, it may even do the opposite: it may make the beauty more real, more authentic. Indeed, such moments may help us allow our dreams to live imperfectly among our daily realities.

Perhaps that's a pretty darn good definition for life. After all, we're going to encounter butterflies and shrieking, no matter how much we try to avoid either. Some of us cloak ourselves with cynicism, thinking it's all going to be hard; none of it matters; and none of it changes much, anyway. Others of us cloak ourselves with denial, refusing to embrace the difficulties we come up against, thinking every challenge is somehow a personal attack.

That middle ground--where dreams are authentic and life is beautiful--seems to somehow embrace all that we experience and allows it to teach us for the journey that still lies ahead.