I am your mother and I know everything.

Sara and I finally connected. We have been trying to get together over the last month, having not seen each other since the beginning of June. Her and her beautiful little ball of fire came over for a play date which was great. The girls got to play outside while Sara and I visited and caught up on the goings on of the last couple months. As we visited I fixed us some lunch, we had lunch with the girls and then continued our visit.

It was getting to be about 3:00pm and Sara said they better get heading and I knew that I should probably be getting going pretty soon too as Robb, the girls and I had plans to go to the pool and go swimming. Sara and I walked out onto the little deck at the top of the stairs and looked out to the backyard where the girls were playing on the swings and with the sand. The three of them were quite a site and seemed to be having such a great time. Such innocent little faces one wouldn't suspect anything less than angelic.

I told the girls that it was time to head up and get our stuff because we were going to be leaving soon and Sara called down to Hanna that they were going to be heading home. Then I heard Olyvia say something but didn't really catch all of it. I was sure, however, that I did hear the word poop. I said, "what was that?" She then yelled again, "There is poop, and Ellie touched it with her hands." I have to say I was perplexed. Poop? I am thinking, what kind of poop and how did it get there and why did Ellie touch it with her hands. But instead of asking any of these questions, I said "what?" sort of chuckeling thinking there must be some confusion. I know, I think a little bit of me . . . or maybe all of me . . . was confused. I asked, " you guys are just playing pretend, right?"

Olyvia then began to explain, "No, its real. Ellie pooped in a bucket and dumped it all over and touched it wither her hands." Ellie then says, "Yeah mom, I pooped in a bucket and it was fun." As she says this, she is looking up at me with this huge grin on her face.

My smile that was on my face, as I had previously been chuckeling thinking they were playing pretend poop games, immediately turned down as my mouth dropped open and I again said, "what?" Sara, trying to hold in her laughs, held her head down as she let out a little gasp. While half laughing (out of shock) myself, I said "this isn't funny. Do you think that she really pooped?" She exclaimed that she had to see this for herself because she couldn't have really pooped.

So we head down the stairs, at this point a part of me is still thinking that they are playing pretend and confusing pretend with reality. We get over to the swingset and I ask them, "where is the poop?" Olyvia tells me that it is "all over." Sara then spots some. I grab the closest bucket which seems to have streaks of some kind of wet mud (NOT WET MUD). I push the poop pellets into the bucket with a leaf and continue to look around for more. While doing so Olyvia mentions that Ellie might have gotten some on the slide. Sara looks, and sure enough there are poop streaks all the way down the slide that have dried on. Oh my goodness, I cannot believe what I am seeing. I am looking at Ellie, who has know climbed up into the house part of the swing set and as doing so my eyes scan her back only to discover, that there is poop all the way up her back side. I immediately turn her around and begin stripping her clothes off her only to discover there is no poop on the inside of her clothing. A question arises, how did poop get on the outside of her pants smeared all over, and non was on the inside of her underwear? Interesting, huh?

Striped naked, except for her crocks, I take her inside to get washed off in the laundry sink. Sara offers to rinse the slide off with the hose. I am walking Ellie to the laundry room, trying not to actually touch her hands which by this time I have noticed are covered in feces (Yummy!) and Ellie actually says to me, "isn't that great mom that I pooped in the bucket." I again find myself saying, "what?" I must say that my vocabulary during this particular incident was horrible.

So while I am washing her off in the laundry room, Ellie has realized that maybe pooping in the bucket, smearing it on the slide and dumping it all over under the swings probably wasn't the best idea and goes for a quick save. "Mom, Olyvia peed in the bucket too and dumped it out." She then looks up at me waiting for a response. My eyes get big, my teeth clench, and I am thinking Oh my goodness, what where they thinking? but I catch what she is trying to do before I say anything and I choose my reaction wisely. I ignore what she said and continue on my explanation of why we DO NOT poop on our toys.

We got all cleaned up, into clean clothes, hands washed, and tell Sara and Hannah bye and that we will see them on Saturday. We then rush upstairs so that we can finish grabbing our stuff for swimming and head out the door. I then realize that I know something that Olyvia doesn't know that I know. I decide to show my upper hand and start instilling fear into her - for when she is a teenager. We are upstairs and Olyvia is standing by the door. I know she is thinking, "I can't believe I got away with that." I look at her while I am folding the towels for swimming and say, "I know you peed in the bucket Olyvia, so don't even try and put all the blame on your sister. That behavior is unexceptable and disgusting." She looked up at me with the biggest eyes of shock she had ever seen. She said, "what? But how did you know?" I simply said, I am your mother and I know everything. When you do something wrong, even when you think I don't know, I do.

Of course later when I told Robb, he laughed.