How Ziggy the Alpaca Became a Household Legend

At first I was horrified by the amount of time the boys spend discussing and laughing about poop. Gross. How could they do this? And why is it always so funny? Brian patiently explained to me that to boys there is something inherently hilarious about poop, even at his age. I don’t get it. Why would I ever want to think about or talk about poop more than was necessary? And having twins has involved a whole lot of poop, none of which has been funny, with the one exception of when Cal’s poop shot across the room off the changing table at Brian when he was a couple months old. That’s it. Every other experience I’ve had, especially the two-in-a-row explosive diarrhea pants at Target about a year ago, has been an experience I’d like to forget.

Not so for the boys. They are constantly talking about poop in all its forms, along with puke and potty. I've written about it in the past, but it seems to have kicked into high gear lately. They also went through the phase of likening their poop to other objects. I’ve sadly grown accustomed to it and accepted that it’s just going to happen, so all I can do is draw strict parameters around when it’s okay, i.e. never at the table or around guests or around other people. Preferably, I’d like it restricted it to bath time with Dad, but that doesn’t really work very well.

Anyway, yesterday we took a trip to the National Zoo with some friends. The first place we visited was the elephant house, where the hit was not the giant elephants, but the huge tube of elephant poop. They wanted pictures in front of it; they wanted to touch it; was it real? Does it smell? Next, on to the pandas. Of course there’s a mold of a piece of panda poop on a string that they can touch and pull— way more interesting than the cute pandas rolling adorably around in their habitats. Later on they had the thrill of their lifetime as not only did we get to see alpaca poop, but Ziggy the Alpaca turned around, squatted, pooped and peed right across the fence from us. Wow! All four boys were entranced. “This is the first time we’ve ever seen an animal poop, Mom!” they all yelled repeatedly as we walked away, after having to pull them away from the fence when the show was over. As we left we even got a glimpse of the pig pen, dotted with pig poop. Oh, the joy.

The boys keep reminding me about Ziggy and that he pooped right in front of us and how cool it was. It's only been twenty four hours, but already Ziggy has become a household legend.

Elephant poop!

Holding panda poop

The fake elephant doesn't poop. Boh-ring.

Ziggy the Alpaca puts on the show...

...which elicits squeals of joy 

Pig poop

Another big hit on the trip was the hand dryers in the women’s bathroom. Shrieks and squeals didn’t stop until their hands were all dried much more than they actually needed to be. So glad we bothered to drive for 45 minutes to see poop and hand dryers. 

I wasn’t upset by the poop. I think I’m used to it. I just have to roll my eyes and try to tune it out. I keep thinking there must be coming a time when it won’t be funny to them, but I’m not sure that will ever come. So for now I need to try to keep the poop talk to fitting contexts and hope that they don’t lose friends over it—I can understand parents not wanting their kids to hang out with two kids who love to talk about poop.

I think only a short while ago I would have been reluctant to publicly admit how much my boy love to talk about poop. Acknowledgement is the first step to healing, right? Or is it the first stage of suffering?

Sea lions- no poop sightings

Being prairie dogs

Three side-by-side hand dryers!