The following guest blog was kindly provided by Antoinette Keane of Burnaby, B.C. as her submission to the Second Annual Summer Writing Contest.

“Poo Poo ice cream MAMA!!!!!” screams this insane toddler at his mother. Other shoppers stop and stare at a pajama bottom wearing mother with unwashed hair and a struggling headband. Oh wait, that’s me. Somewhere down the winding roads of history I have become that woman. That mother. Many friend filled, wine packed evenings in bars around Europe have somehow led me to this specific supermarket (is there anything super about them, really?) in this suburb of Vancouver deemed Burquitlam (also be wary of a suburb with Quit and Lam in the title).

Nonetheless here I stand avoiding all mirrored surfaces lest I catch a glimpse of the new and devolved me. The insane toddler bears no resemblance to either pre baby me or the current incarnation. Despite giving birth to him, all 10 lbs 4 ozs of him (don’t worry, c-section) , his red curly hair, long lanky legs, pale skin and hazel eyes all are due to his father. When visiting his birth village in Wales, a strange old woman I’d never met came up to me and grabbed my arm, “We all know you ain’t been messin about! Look at ‘im! He’s the spit of his father!”. It was lovely to have my high morals affirmed by the local washer woman.

Back to the moment at hand, my son is eagerly conveying to me that in fact he would like to do a poop. Whatever dignity I had pre-child, I no longer recall. My husband and I are deeply immersed in a scatological subculture of poop and poop related products. We are currently bribing our son to have a bowel movement with the lure of chocolate ice cream. Thus every potty visit is ended with a questioning ‘PooPooIceCream?’. Quite frankly, we messed up. We set the bar too dang high. Ice cream? Every day? And its inconvenient too, what about potty visits outside the home? We know, we know.

The reward system is one of our errors. But what gets insidious is the songs, the books, the feeling of celebration every single time he goes number 2. You don’t even notice it until someone without children comes to your home. Because if you don’t have kids, you probably have not yelped up and down with joy “Oh that’s a big one! Where’s the poop – THERE’S THE POOP!!!!!!’ let alone even looked at another person poop. Toilet time is private before you have kids. Even when you go, it would be weird if some one burst into the bathroom demanding to know if you went poop or not.

But that time is over and Dyllan and I race to the Safeway bathroom, singing our made up poop song, off to discover ‘Where’s the Poop?’.