One of the really fun things about parenting occurs when the kid is older and you can embarrass him with all the nasty things he did as a child.  Steve-o, consider this payback for the stretch marks from hell that do NOT ever go away.

When Steve-o was about 18 months old he was at the age when kids get into everything.  They don’t know what is gross (like smearing handfuls of snot on other people’s shirts for example, or smearing snot in one’s own hair) so they don’t know that certain things are better left untouched.  Steve-o was at that tender age when he had not yet learned that cat turds are better left uneaten.

Usually the basement door was kept closed. The cats had a cat door cut into the basement door so they could get to the basement and to their facility so there was no reason to leave the basement door open.  More than likely I had been bringing up laundry and failed to close the door completely, giving Steve-o the opportunity to explore the vast, dark, damp unknown of The Basement. 

As most mothers of male offspring have learned, boys gravitate toward the dirtiest things they can find.  Steve-o was no exception.  As soon as I noticed the door was wide open, I looked down the basement stairs and lo and behold- there he was, gleefully tossing cat turds in the air,as if he were playing in a sandbox, and rubbing them in his hair.  I was positively mortified.

I sweep him off the floor, strip off his clothes and plop him in the bathtub.  As I’m running the water and soaping up the wash rag he is screaming bloody murder.  I scrub his hair, his face, his hands- every inch of his body.  Even though I thought I sanitized him thoroughly, he still ended up with a wicked eye infection, which meant two weeks of trying to cram antibiotics down his throat, as well as pinning him down for eye drops twice a day.   It’s easier to get dogs to take medication than it was to get him to.  At least with dogs you can hide a pill in a cheese sandwich.

The good news is he hasn’t played in a cat box since, so the lesson must have been learned.