Why? Why the obsession with toilets, private parts, and excrement?

My son is ridiculous. Totally and utterly obsessed with the toilet. Not just the toilet water but the seat, the brush and the hoses that connect it to the water supply. He loves to tear up toilet paper into tiny pieces and throw it in the bowl going so far as to shove it between my legs as I try to pee. Anything he can throw in there, including entire rolls of paper, he will. This leads to why I am writing this…

I sit here a little grossed out because I just had to fish a bunch of tub toys out of a toilet bowl. And of course it wasn’t at least clean water. Oh no, I had to dig these toys out of a dirty bowl. My daughter had just finished making a massive deposit. How a child that small creates turds that large I will never know… And Billy decided that was a great place to dump Peach ( the starfish from Nemo –or as Helen would say, “Actually Mommy, its Finding Nemo…”- but that is a whole other rant…), Tigger, a Mega Block and a rubber whale. I briefly considered soaking them in a bleach solution to clean them, but I was too aghast and just chucked them – Sorry Peach!

But the childhood obsession with bodily functions and parts is also pretty amusing. This afternoon Melissa and Evan were over for lunch. Evan loudly announced that he had to pee. So I turned the light on for him and asked if he needed help. “No Auntie Voula, I can do it by myself and I’m going to stand up!!!” A few minutes later I heard a voice shouting from the bathroom “Auntie Voula, Mommy come quick! Come look! Come look at my pee!!!” This child insists that you look at his pee and poops, before he flushes them.

This was after his mom finished telling me the wonderful story of his new game. The game? This morning as she was dressing him he said “Mommy! Look at my pee-pee game!” So he stood in his room, naked, holding his penis and pointing it all over the place all the while making shooting noises. I was just relieved to hear that he wasn’t actually trying to pee at the same time, but I wonder: does that qualify as a deadly weapon? 🙂

And I just heard about another friend’s 4 year old who has started, out of the blue, mooning his mother. Yes, mooning. At 4 years old. It’s not as if his parents are sitting around watching American Pie or Animal House with their kids! The kid came up with it on his own! Where do they learn this stuff?

And little girls are not exempt from this fixation! Helen has the normal fascination with her parts. Occasionally she will lift up her shirt and show us her nipples. And I often have to tell her to leave her brother’s penis alone in the bathtub, because she thinks it’s funny to poke it and giggle “Peanits!” But the worst thing she’s done is to harass the dog. My MIL’s dog likes to sit up with his forepaws on the back of the sofa, staring longingly out the window at the demon squirrels next door. One afternoon Helen was sitting with him and noticed he is a he. Before we could stop her, she poked the dog in the groin and said, “Hey Casey has a peanits!” I never saw a dog jump off a couch so fast!
Voula