A "Deuce" Like No Other

While I was cooking dinner this evening, Caleb was busy playing in the backyard. He came to the back door and was hollering for me, so I went to check out the situation. "Mom! There's POOP in the backyard!" No big deal, I thought. It was probably a stray cat or something. He was pretty upset, though, and went on to frantically tell me that some of the poop was on him.

"Great." I'm thinking. "What in the world is he doing in our backyard with poop?" He's three, though, so there's no telling. As with most problems when you're three, the solution is a bath, so I proceeded to strip him down in the backyard before herding him straight to the tub. By the time I got to his undies, I discovered that he had been the originator of the poo. He doesn't really have accidents, so I was pretty surprised. "Did you not feel it coming, Buddy?" "No, I did. The rest of the poop is over there...," he said, while pointing towards the wall at the back of the yard.

I should have known, and it's probably my own fault. No, I do not go to the bathroom in our backyard - or anyone else's, for that matter. But I did make the mistake of letting him pee on a tree at the park one day because he really had to go. At that time, I didn't realize it was a mistake, but since then he's developed quite a fondness for relieving himself in the middle of the great outdoors. (As, I understand, most men do.) It never occurred to me, though, that I needed to create a distinction between the acceptability of the occasional going potty on a tree when absolutely necessary and going outside just because it's fun. Especially #2! Further proof that there's somehow a total disconnect in a three-year-old's ability to reason.

So, my question is this: how the heck do you reprimand your son for defecating in the yard while mentally picturing the little guy squatting by the back wall? I can tell you, it's darn hard to do with a straight face.

I related the story to Zach, who thought it was quite amusing. (Although he probably wouldn't have found it quite so funny if he was the one who had to scrub poo out of Caleb's clothes.) When Zach got home, he went to check on Caleb in the tub. He again asked him if he hadn't felt the "poops" coming, but he got a totally different story than I did.

"No." Caleb replied, quite seriously. "They were sneaky ones!"