Competitive Eating

I am going to go way out a limb here to reveal a little more about myself and perhaps, stay-at-home parents in general than you may want to know – don’t tell everyone, but we don’t get to shower every day and we often go to the bathroom with the door open.
I know this is a shock to many. But I checked around, it is not just Dad’s, it is moms too. Hey, with two kids, three and under, a five minute shower can result in a trip to the emergency room. And on those rare occasions when nature calls in a big way – I am not talking a quick little tinkle, I mean full-on gut wrenching evacuations, those moments of vulnerability can be very difficult to handle with little ones.
Case in point, we have a half-bath located just off the kitchen. It is in need of an update, but is fully functional and comes in handy in emergencies. One day, I received one of those messages from God reminding of my humanity and was forced to rush to the bathroom.
I grew up as an only child in a conservative house. I had never had a conversation on the toilet until I got to college and lived in a dorm for a year. As for leaving the door open while answering nature’s call that was a adjustment I had to make after getting married and having kids.
So there I am in the bathroom, making my donation to the sewer authority with the door open so I can hear any emergency screams from the kids, when I hear my 11-month-old daughter crawling toward the kitchen. She had somehow escaped the den. The Ottoman Empire -- the ottomans that I leave in the doorway as a blockade to contain the girl -- let me down and she is steaming toward the kitchen. I am thinking, “Oh great, here she comes in to find me in the bathroom. I hate this.”
Well, she never found me. She wasn’t looking for me. I heard her make a bee-line right for the dog’s dish. “Oh worse, she’s going to eat the dog food again.” Well, the Good Lord was not yet finished with the lesson in humanity. I still had unfinished business. It would have to wait. I need to get out of there as fast as possible to stop the girl from ingesting Kibbles and Bits. I look down at the toilet paper and there’s nothing there but a cardboard roll. And I look around the bathroom, there is no back-up roll either.
At this point I can here the girl crunching on the Kibbles. By the time I got out there, she must have eaten about five pieces. Now, you may say that, I must have been dawdling to allow here to eat five pieces before I got out there, but what you don’t know is my daughter is a competitive eater.
She has two hands, and uses all ten fingers to shovel the food down her gullet. She eats like a shelter dog. As though, this may be her last meal. She eats more like dog than our dog. Maggie, our dog, sniffs, takes a bite, chews – the dog chews. Have you ever seen a dog chew? Dogs don’t chew. Our dog chews, walks around, comes back, sniffs, moves things around with her nose, takes a bite, enjoys, savors, takes another bite. The dog eats like a bird. The baby eats like a Doberman. Everything goes in the mouth at once. Chewing is for people with teeth. I am a bit fearful of what she’s going to do once she starts using tools, like spoons and forks, and funnels.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t the last time she managed to scarf down dog food. She is very opportunistic, she waits until I am not in a position to stop her, like when I am attempting to teach my three-year-old son how to pee-standing up and not drench down the entire bathroom. “Son, it is your hose. You gotta learn to control it. There ya go. Good shootin’, Tex.” I poke my head out of the bathroom to check on the girl. “Reagan, get out of the dog’s dish!!!!”