Home of Douglas Loots

That’s the question I had to ask myself tonight.

Got home from work today and I asked the kids if they wanted to go play at the school park (Westridge). Of course the answer was an affirmative from both Brayton and Lauren. I told them we had to eat supper first before we could go. So, Colette had cooked a nice casserole for us. It had some hamburger, mixed vegetables, and was topped with macaroni and cheese. Everything by itself the kids love it, but mix them together and it takes a ton of coaxing to get them to eat it. I even pulled out the junior mints to try to pursuade them. Brayton cleanded his plate up only because he wanted the jumior mints worse than a meth addict wants that next fix. Lauren, well, I never got her to take more than two bites. She never got a junior mint either.

Colette wanted to go to Lowes and buy some flowers tonight, so she dropped us off at Westridge and we went and played while she took off to Lowes to buy flowers. I always stress to the kids going to the bathroom before we got to the park to avoid the exact thing I wrote about earlier this month, that is having to pee at the park. Well, tonight after playing for about 15 minutes, Brayton comes to me butt sticking out waddling along like the Hunchback of Notre Dame, he says “Daddy I’ve got to go poop!” I asked him if he could hold it or if he wanted to go home, he said he could hold it and kept on playing.

I put my hand inside my pocket and realized I hadn’t brought my keys to the house. So even if we did go home to go poop, we couldn’t get in. I proceeded to call Colette. She called me back and I told her not to worry about it because he seemed to be fine and to keep shopping for flowers.

Not 30 seconds later and Brayton is walking like the Hunchback again. I said “Brayton – what’s the matter?” He said, “Daddy, I really really got to go poop!”

I said, “Can you make it home?” He said “NO! I got to go poop NOW!” I had no idea exactly what I was going to do, I had no diaper bag, no wipes, no keys to the house, nothing – I was going to have to improvise.

I told him to come with me under some of the playground equipment, he pulled his pants down and I told him to squat down so he didn’t poop in his pants. Right there, he pooped under the playground equipment. Of course Lauren had followed us under there and was watching Brayton do his deed. She then proceeded to get curious and almost stepped in the mess, but I managed to grab her and move her away from Brayton’s poop before she stepped in it.

Luckily there wasn’t anyone else at the playground, it was about 7:30 PM. After he pulled his pants up I had to then debate what to do with his poop. Do I try to pick it up? No way…I decided to kick a bunch of the wood chips from the playground over it.

I buried it pretty well, but I can’t help to think some kid is going to step in it tomorrow at recess. Here I sit, writing this blog entry, debating about going back to the school with a flashlight to try to find my son’s duke and clean up the mess.

But I haven’t, and I probably won’t, so does that make me a bad father?

After we got back from the park, Colette met us and let us in the house. I took the kids up, gave them baths and put Lauren to bed while Brayton picked out a couple of books to read. After we read our books, Brayton looked at me and said, “Daddy you put wood chips on my poop.”

I said, “Yes I did son, someday you’ll do the same thing for your son.”

That’s what fathers do.

Spring is finally here! There’s been lots of rain the past few weeks, but the weather has been cooperating enough we’ve had lots of fun the past month playing outside.

The weekend before Easter we traveled home to see Grandma’s and Grandpa’s. While we were in Pomeroy, Grandpa Gordon gave Brayton a ride in his new tractor. After starting it up Brayton decided he didn’t want to sit in the cab anymore so he and Colette just rode around the block in the bucket.

At the beginning of April, Colette bought some cardboard building blocks off of Craigslist.org. The kids have had lots of fun building cities and tall stacks of blocks. Lauren figured out early on that if she went and got her potty step she could stack an extra block on top before tipping it over. It didn’t take long before Brayton picked up this technique and he could get them stacked 5 high. What was really fun was watching the two of them cooperate together to build the big towers and knock them over as the video will attest.

Since we had gone back home to see Grandma’s and Grandpa’s the weekend prior to Easter so we decided to stay home and go to Living History Farms for an Easter egg hunt. They put on quite an event. They had a Easter egg hunt for little kids where Brayton and Lauren got lots of treats. Living History farms actually ran out of Easter Eggs to put the treats in so they just started dropping the little toys on the groung. There were lots of animals to see including sheep, cows, and turkeys. Brayton thought the sheep would like jelly beans, it was quite funny. And last but not least there were tons and tons and tons of people there. We had a great time and may invite the Grandma’s and Grandpa’s down next year to attend. Later that evening Joe and Lynette Streck came over to grill out and we had another little Easter Egg hunt in our backyard. Brayton by that time had figured out all the eggs had treats in them and I don’t think I’ve ever seen him move so quickly to gather all the eggs. Also, above are photos of the kids in their Easter best clothes. Brayton got to wear a suit and Lauren got to wear her pretty pretty dress.

The third week of April I decided we were going to build a sandbox for the kids. Went to Lowes, bought the materials and we started to build. I thought it was only going to be a one or two evening project but we had so much fun we stretched it out for almost two weeks. Colette invited the Roemen kids over one day to hand paint the 2×12 beams and they all had a great time painting. Lauren got paint all over her face and one of the kids gave her a nice hand print on her tummy after she stripped down to nothing but her undies. And yes you’ll probably notice she likes to wear Brayton’s underwear. We can hardly get her to wear her own, I’m uncertain if it’s because her’s are uncomfortable or if she just wants to wear the same undies as her big brother.

Lastly in the video, we have Brayton pitching a fit. I thought I’d bless all the Grandmas and Grandpas with a crying child just to bring back those wonderful memories.

Finally, though we didn’t get any movies we went to our neice Emily’s baptism in Omaha at Ryan and Mikhael’s on April 26th. Lauren had a great time holding Baby Emily, she even got to help me feed Baby Emily a bottle. This was a big thrill for Lauren. The whole ride home Lauren kept saying “Bring Baby Emily home!” “Bring Baby Emily home!” I wanted to say “Sorry Dear, I hope it will be a few more years before we have another baby in this house!” I’ve attached a few pictures of Lauren helping Grandma Cindy hold Emily and giving Emily kisses. Lauren has quite the Mommy instinct already.

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… Rank: wait… Traffic: wait… Price: wait… C: wait…

Today is Wednesday, April 8 and normally I have class on Wednesday’s. This means I would leave work about 4pm, ride the bus home, and arrive shortly before 5pm. I’d eat a quick dinner, play with the kids for 15 minutes and then head off to class that begins at 6pm.

Tonight, Colette and the kids came to work to pick me up which meant that we got home about 415 instead of 445. Since it was about 55 degrees out, sunny, and I had an extra 45 minutes on my hands, I decided to take the kids to the playground at Westridge Elementary. This would give Colette a few minutes of peace and quiet and me a little play time prior to heading out to class.

Brayton rode his bike to Westridge and I pushed Lauren in the stroller. Once we arrived at the school there is this large slide that they can climb up and slide down the tube and they really love it. So, we did that for a while. There were about 50 kids there for after school care playing as well, and my two kids were by far the youngest on the playground. Also present were what appeared to be one father and 3 mothers standing in relative proximity to me while I was watching B & L play going up and down the slide. After a bit, Brayton started straying away from the slide, first he went to the swings then to the other items on the playground. I was able to keep pretty good track of him so I wasn’t too concerned, I figured I’d just let him play.

While B was playing on the swings, Lauren was at the top of the slide playing and she was kind of getting bumped around by the older kids. They weren’t doing anything mean to her, rather she was just slower than they were and she was kind of in the way so she was getting a little fussy. Because of this, I was trying to convince her to get on the slide and come down so we could go play over by Brayton.

While I was concentrating on Lauren, I heard one of these three women go “Oh, my gosh, look at that little boy.” Obviouslly this peaked my interest because I knew it was likely they were talking about my son and I was concerned he had fallen or something while I was paying attention to Lauren.

I scanned the playground and could not see Brayton. I looked and looked for what seemed an eternity but in reality was probably only a few seconds. Then I heard another lady say, “I can’t believe that, who’s child is that.”

It was about this time that I found Brayton. He had strayed to the edge of the playground and there he was, pants down to his ankles peeing on the grass…His bare butt almost glistening in the sunshine. My son… There were kids running everywhere and these 4 parents were watching my son pee right there on the edge of the playground.

One of the women said, “I’m sure glad that’s not my child.”

About that time, Brayton got finished, pulled his pants up and came running over to me saying “Daddy, I peed on the grass!!! Daddy, I peed on the grass!!!”

He was so proud, and there was no hint of shame or any idea that there was anything wrong with peeing on the grass. He did what came naturally. You gotta go pee, so go. I’m glad he didn’t stop by the end of the slide and pee there, but he could have. At least he peed off the playground at a place where others don’t regularly tread.

The sight of my son with his pants down at a fairly crowded playground would have been a great photo to add to the story, but unfortunately I didn’t have the camera. Opportunity missed I guess.

This is one of those moments that will forever be ingrained in my memory though, and a story I’m sure I’ll tell at his graduation or wedding someday. What a wonderful life.