Tuesday, October 28, 2014

the three fluids


They say having a child(ren) helps to chill you out.

Is it.

Boet, I don't know about that.

In some respects, yes. Like, at the moment I am wearing a pom pom beanie when I go outside because I can't be fussed with actual hair brushing. How I don't have dreadlocks, I dunno, (washing regularly maybe?), but yes, I have become completely chilled out about my barnet.

I also, like most mums, exit the house with baby detritus on my being. So yes, in a manner of speaking, I have chilled out about what my trousers manage to pick up over the course of a day.

Two things I haven't chilled out about at all, and may cause foreseeable issues, are:
1) Mess.
2) Snot.

Everything else that slides towards unkept anarchy, is mostly fine with me. The two things above - well, I feel nauseas just thinking about both.

Let's start with Mess. When I refer to Mess, I mean in general. I have been blessed with a little boy, and this means that from now on, he will try to trash my house. In fact, just last week a woman at a playgroup (with a boy on her lap) turned to me, winked, and said, "Girls wreck your head; boys wreck your house."

Whichever you determine is worse, at the moment my baby is already wrecking mine. House, that is. I'm giving him finger foods, which if he doesn't put in his mouth and then spit directly onto the floor in a salivary ball, he will just smoosh them around his plate and then push it onto the floor.

I dress him like he's going paintballing, because he will smear foodstuffs all over his clothes, often things like blueberries and bread.

There's shit everywhere. I am forever with dustpan and cloth, and while it's exhausting cleaning up after him and his destructive trail, I am aware of two things. One, it's only going to get worse as he ascends into toddlerdom. Two, if I don't have a clean house, I have a panic embolism.

I'm ridiculously houseproud. My house has to be in order - from having an immaculate basin and toilet to clean surfaces and gleaming dishes.
Obviously most of the time these days, these things aren't to be. But I'll be damned, that if I have guests over, my house had better be spotless.


I'm in a lot of trouble aren't I? I mean, when he learns to pee standing up, he is going to decorate the bathroom floor all over, all the time.
He will smear mud and all sorts on the floor and couch. But still, I have to control it; I will control it. I cannot function otherwise.

Now. Snot.

When you have a kid, there are three bodily fluids you'll be exposed to (explosed to?) multiple times a day. The fluids will explode from all orifices, everywhere, and two times out of three, your conversations will revolve around them: their colour, how big, frequency and with what force they exited the body.

I don't mind this chat, never have.

Pooh, vomit and snot. I have become accustomed to and have mastered - I'd like to think - the first two. I can wipe Sebastian's ass with one hand, while using the other to stop him wriggling; I have dealt with three consecutive Man Chunders that he projectiled over me in quick succession, so I've earned my stripes, so to speak, there.

Now that he is on a full array of foods, this new menu has done wonders for the smell. The Brit and I need gas masks when we change him, and yet, it still - still - doesn't repulse me as much as much as snot.

When I was an au pair about a hundred years ago, the family introduced me to this utterly unforgivable snot-clearing device to extract snot in the event the baby got a cold.

It was a tube that you suck on to help pull it out.

Dude. I am about to vomit over this keyboard, (as am sure you are too), but for the love of Christ, what the fuck. 

I find it difficult to clean Sebastian's nose of the nasal offerings that he presents to me most days. Tissues, earbuds, I really only go there if I really have to. If it's right there, I'll immediately wipe it away but I'll throw up a little in my mouth when I do so.
If it's up his nose and takes some wrestling to get at it, no thanks, I don't even try. He is going to be one of those children that learns to wipe and blow his own nose at a very young age.

I'm honestly considering doing this as a priority before potty training.

I love my son more than anything conceivable. But I cannot handle this snot.

Or mess. But snot more.


2 comments:

Madi said...

oh my god snot.... I'm just as bad. when my niece and nephew had runny noses I actually had to leave to room until my sister sorted it out. Could. Not. Handle... Felt kinda bad running away from them but it was that or gag at them, which may have given them a wee bit of a complex me thinks...

I don't have kids yet but that is definitely one of the things I will struggle with the most.

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