Peyton Cruising the Halls

So, Peyton is my first (and only) child. She just turned 15 months. As she was 3 months premature (another story), she is really the size of a 12 month old. However, time and time again, she reminds me that she really is 15 months old developmentally – every day I find she teaches me something new, sometimes to my excitement, and others to my horror.

Today was no different. Over the past few weeks, I have been introducing new textured solid foods and treats everyday – carrots, Nutri-grain bars, cheese, crackers, chocolate… etc.

So today, Peyton was participating in one of her hourly “exploring the hallway” ventures, yelling and chirping down the hallway. First stop was stopping in to Aunt Keiana’s bedroom and “reorganizing” her CD collection, so conveniently located on her bottom shelf. Once they were “perfectly in order” all over the floor, she then proceeded to “rearrange” my organized change table, showing me that she could now take out all the liners from the pre-stuffed cloth diapers, and showing me that she not only knew where the container of heated wipes are, but she can open the lid and take them out one at a time, and they all taste… great!

 After she took a quick trip to the bathroom to wash her hands (in the toilet of course!), she re-found her wall-mounted entertainment unit – the toilet paper roll! I swear, if she were to write her own letter to Santa, this would be one of her personal requests – her own toilet paper roll dispenser installed on the side of her crib!

Finally, she discovered the cat litter box at the end of the hall. And honestly, I am surprised it took her this long to find it. It is one of the covered bins with a removable/clipable lid and an opening on one of the 4 sides for the cat to enter and exit. I’m sure she has seen it before, as I have heard her smacking the sides of it when one of the cats were inside; however, I believe that today was the day she truly discovered its real potential.

As I am working on some Piddly-Winx stuff on the computer in the bedroom, I tune in to the silence… Uh oh, silence. I have been learning that silence is no longer the good thing that I yearned for throughout the day. It’s the opposite now – she has found something to pre-occupy herself, and I can’t see her.

I call her name, and she grunts/acknowledges in response, which tells me she is nearby, but she is still out of sight. So, I get up from the computer, and I proceed to check out the hallway.

And there she is, sitting right outside the cat little box, with a HUGE grin on her face… and, to my horror, in her right hand is a half-eaten, 4-inch cat turd which she is proceeding to eat like a carrot.

I almost lost my lunch.

I quickly scooped what I could out of her mouth, and wiped her hands and face down, which she of course hates even more than me taking things from her. As we hit the 3rd octave in screeching, I had finally made my way to the kitchen to replace her precious poop with a piece of a Kit-Kat bar, as I thought it looked similar. Shame on me. She simply sat on the floor, screaming bloody murder, because I took away HER cat poop. However, after a bite into the chocolate bar, she seemed quite content…

Once I had her distracted, I quickly checked out Google to see if I should be taking her to the doctor. Luckily, after making it past the pretty scary “Irresponsible mothering, unacceptable parent, “cats are demons and have diseases so she could die” posts, I found a one liner answer which has me even more terrified for what’s to come…

“Oh hunny, if you think cat poop is the worst thing your daughter is going to put into her mouth, you are sorely mistaken…”

Oh gosh.