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Gretchen Lancour

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Gretchen Lancour is a writer, radio host, and toddler wrangler. She enjoys kids, animals, books, music, and hugs. She does not care for spiders, papercuts, onions, or math. Gretchen lives in San Francisco's North Beach District with her husband and son....

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I Survived Family Visit 2008

Gretchen Lancour

When I was about four and my sister was sixteen she and her boyfriend took me to see Disney’s Cinderella.  Maybe it was the excitement, maybe it was half a tub of pre-show popcorn, we’ll never know for certain, but as the lights went down in the theater adorable four year-old me farted.  Loudly.  When you’re sixteen on a date the last thing you want to explain is a giant fart.  People in the row in front of us turned to see who had compromised the integrity of our row, but in the dim light, and because I was so small, they didn’t notice me.  They only noticed my sister.  I smiled up at her as she shouldered the blame for the fart.  In addition to being a good example of why I love my sister, it’s also a good example of why she’ll always be amused by the small disasters of my life. 

Take this past Saturday: I took my eight family members visiting from Ohio on a ferry trip across the San Francisco Bay to Sausalito.  There’s a hole in the wall on the main drag that serves outstanding hamburgers; that was our destination.  Burgers and fries + Midwesterners and toddlers = lunch perfection.  Sounds great, right?

The terrible error in judgment on my part came before we left my apartment.  My son convinced me he wanted to wear Pull-Ups instead of a bona fide diaper.  Now, I’ve been encouraging the Pull-Ups and the big-boy underpants for weeks, and he’s been doing quite well in them.  I thought it would be fine.  I should’ve thrown a change of clothes in my backpack, just in case. 

The boys wrestled and ran around a beautiful fountain in between bites of burgers and fries Then my son came to me with two words that struck fear in my heart, - “Mommy, poo poo.”  (Maybe that’s three words.  I’m unclear on poo poo.)  I grabbed a diaper and escorted him behind a tree to evaluate the situation; my husband assisted.  It was a total blow-out.  I’m talking, pant-load-full, oh-my-god-it’s-in-his-shoes-too kind of blow-out.  We had a plastic bag, but no change of clothes, and our return ferry was arriving.  My husband did a quick search for toddler pants in the tourist stores, without any luck.  I decided the boy’s North Face fleece jacket might work as pants.  I stuffed his chubby little legs into the arms of the jacket and zipped the front of the jacket up the back as far as it would go.  It worked… sort of.  North Face designers, a toddler jacket that can double as pants – get on that.

During this catastrophe my sister was laughing so hard she was crying.  In fact, when I zipped the jacket over my kid’s butt she finally had to leave for fear of peeing her pants and needing a jacket-pants of her own.