WFMW: Fiber-iffic Fun!

You all know I LOVE talking about poop so I’m happy to have a poop-related post to share with you for Works for Me Wednesday. Even though Joshua is fully potty-trained and has been for about six months, he still has pooping issues from time-to-time. He has a history of being, uh, “plugged up”, if you will and recently that tendency has reared its ugly head, or more appropriately, tail. So, it’s been taking the kid 10-15 minutes to push out a poop. I don’t know why, but he always has to have an audience for the great event to occur (I am really, really, really hoping he outgrows this soon. This could have serious repercussions later in life!!) and so until recently, I’ve had to cage Sophie via Pack-n-Play or exersaucer every time her brother has to lay a deuce. So it goes like this: I run back and forth between the boy on the john and the screaming baby (did I mention she hates to be restrained in any way?) for ten minutes or so until Joshua is finally able to move his poor little bowels with me cheering him on and singing him songs. By the time his ginormous rock-hard turd hits the crapper, we are all exhausted.

Last week, I decided this had to change. Joshua is a very picky eater, and he obvisously wasn’t gettng enough fiber in his diet. So I took a cue from my friend Jill at the Diaper Diaries, who loves her some fiber, and I put a couple fiber-tricks in motion to get Joshua on his way to happy, healthier pooping. The first thing I did was head to Trader Joe’s to get some ground flaxseed. This stuff is great! It’s ground very fine, packed full of fiber, and easy to conceal in food. I put it in Joshua’s oatmeal, cinnamon-and-splenda toast, grilled cheese, and peanut butter sandwiches. He never even knows it’s there! I put it in dinners I make too – soups, casseroles, anything he won’t SEE it in. (I tried putting it in his ketchup once – no dice – he could see it.) The second trick I implemented is prune juice. We don’t drink much juice in our house, mostly milk & water, so juice is a treat for Joshua. Still, it’s a little much to ask for a three-year-old to down straight prune juice, so I mix it with reduced-sugar grape juice, about 50-50, and he gulps it down. Finally, I’ve found two snack crackers he really likes that are fiber-full. One, on Jill’s recommendation, is the Kashi TLC cracker. Yum yum! He loves them! The other are the All-Bran Snack Bites. I used to get these at Kroger’s, , but I’ve recently found them at Big Lots for a bargain price – just in time to get us through this Poop Crisis! They have a yummy cinnamon & brown sugar taste and 5 grams of fiber per serving! Yea!

Happily, we saw results in Joshua’s bathroom time within about four days. He now poops about every-other-day instead of twice a week, and he can dispatch a giant turd in about 15 seconds instead of 15 minutes! Yea for Fiber! Adding it surreptitiously to your child’s diet takes the drama out of bathroom time and it works for me (and Joshua!)

For more great Works for Me Wednseday ideas, head on over to Rocks In My Dryer.

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My Uterus is Throwing a Temper Tantrum

Wednesday I had an unhappy mid-afternoon surprise: after 19 long, glorious months, my period had returned. Nine months of pregnancy (ok, those months weren’t exactly glorious) and ten months of nursing had kept my little red friend away, but as of Wednesday, my luck has run out.

My uterus is PISSED, y’all. For two days now she’s been putting up quite a fuss. Cramping and flooding and pouring out her wrath upon me and the sad bottle of ibuprofen that is all I can take for this mess since I’m still nursing. She actually chuckles sarcastically at me when I pick up the bottle of ibuprofen, but I’m taking them anyways, just to take the edge off. Oh, if only I didn’t have these two pesky kids I could curl up in the fetal position and wait for the storm to blow over. But alas, I must parent in spite of my enraged womb.

Crap!

The Angry Uterus is also (strangely) the Hungry Uterus. I just went to the market down the street to get just bread and I came home with bread, chocolate milk, Hershey’s syrup, Jell-o Puddin’ Pops (my childhood favorite!), and one of those Betty Crocker single-serve desserts you make in the microwave. Molten Chocolate Cake. Ohhhh yeah. That baby is as good as GONE as soon as I put Joshua down for a nap!

So, apparently the Uterus likes chocolate. I think I remember that from 19 months ago…

Ok, Joshua is down for nap. It’s eating time! Me & my PO’ed Uterus will talk to you later.

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Gotta Go!: The Public Potty Predicament

The lovely Pinks & Blues Girls are having a contest to go along with their Ladies Room Initiative. It’s called the Gotta Go Giveaway, and as usual, I wanna win! So here’s my story about the most frustrating public restroom experience I’ve ever had.

About three weeks ago, I took the kiddos to Big Lots, which I frequent, because I am extreeeemely thrifty. Joshua, Sophia and I were scoping out the toy aisle (having already loaded up on Gerber baby food for 25 cents a jar, woot woot!) when I smelled something stinky. “Joshua, do you need to go potty?” I asked my three-year-old. “No,” he answered, meaning, of course, “Yes, but I want to stand here and look at toys, so I’m currently in poop denial.” Even though I wasn’t keen on taking him to the potty at Big Lots, I was even less keen on him pooping his pants in my car on the way home, so I pressed the issue and we went in search of the ladies’ room. Which I soon found was a one-holer that was already occupied. So we waited and I encouraged my son to hold it (he had by now come to terms with needing to poop) while we waited for the person in the stall. Finally the lady came out and I rushed my kiddos into the stall. You can’t take the cart in the rest room (not that it would have fit inside anyways), so of course, there was nothing I could do with Sophia (8 months) but set her on the FLOOR, which much to my horror was quite dirty. So I set her down as far away from the toilet as possible, while still keeping her in the stall with me. I took her little hands and put my purse in them, praying she would just hold on to the purse and not touch the floor. Then I held Joshua on the toilet while he pooped. He is super-skinny and his buns will fall right through a regulation-sized public toilet, so I still have to hold him on. (Since women of child-bearing age are the target customers of most retail stores, including Big Lots, I think it is ridiculous that NONE of them has a child-sized potty! Or sink!!)

So anyways, he laid down a deuce, I wiped him, collected my daughter, and hoofed it out of there! Since I definitely didn’t want Sophie to sit out on the floor under the sink with all the dirty paper towels that were on the ground while I helped Joshua wash his hands, I just hosed all three of us down with Purell when we got in the car.

I suppose it could’ve been worse, but it was very frustrating and YUCKY to have my kids in that situation. So, the moral of the story is: Closeout prices do NOT buy nice restroom facilities!

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