Kaia has been expressing interest in the potty since the beginning of this year. She loves to follow me into the bathroom when I have to pee or poop. Sometimes, when I need to go, I will tell her and ask if she wants to come. Almost every time, she will enthusiastically agree and come into the bathroom running. She will observe my every move, so I make sure to narrate every step for her understanding, from pulling down my pants, to sitting on the toilet seat (NOT THE BOWL), wiping, ensuring I’m clean, then pulling up my pants and flushing the toilet. And of course, she always knows I have to “xi shou” or wash hands right after.

Unfortunately, she isn’t totally ready to potty train. I tried to get her to sit on a toddler potty that I got off of Buy-Nothing, but she got scared and refused. She still cannot fully pull her pants down and up every time. Sometimes, she also gives false alarms by telling us she pooped when she did not. But one thing she consistently does when she poops is: she will disappear from where we are and go silent, go into a corner or another room, close the door, poop in her diaper, then come back to us, usually walking awkwardly with a big stool in her diaper. She did that tonight. When I opened the door to the bathroom she was in, it smelled like her poop, so I knew she had gone. I brought her to the changing station, and SMUSH. Some of the poop had spilled out of her diaper and onto the floor mat by her changing station. I had poop all over my right toes.

I stepped into Kaia’s shit, literally. It was red (from beets), stinky, and mushy. I had no idea that anything had fallen out of her diaper. I was not pleased.

Chris finished with cleaning her up and getting her into a clean diaper. While he did that, I limped around on one foot while spot cleaning the floor mat before throwing it into the washer to get laundered. I also removed excess poop from her blown-out shorts with a tissue before swishing the shorts in a bucket with laundry detergent for a pre-clean, then finally went into the bathtub to wash my own feet.

Well, that was an adventure. Having a child is truly an adventure in itself, isn’t it?

I yelped quite loudly when I stepped in her poop and realized what it was. She then proceeded to parrot my yelp, each intonation after the other, in what Chris said was a “perfect imitation.” Yes, she’s truly a perfectionist when it comes to the art of imitation now, and certainly at the most opportune moments.

This incident reminded me of when we were in Pennsylvania last month, and we were in the lounge room of the hotel with Chris’s parents. I could tell that Kaia was pooping in a corner because she had gone quiet and disappeared for a bit. When she ran up to me, she smelled of poop. She smiled while looking at me and said, “I pooped over there.” She pointed to the window overlooking the parking lot. Shen then led me over to where she pooped. And right there, I saw a small little blob of human poop — her human poop. I immediately brought her back to our room to clean her up and to ensure no other damage was done to her clothes. Then, I promptly went back to the lounge room to remove her poop and clean the area.

All I wonder now is: how many more little round poops of Kaia’s am I going to keep inadvertently discovering…?