Post-Dinner Melt-down

This evening, after dinner, we got the pleasure of witnessing an unexpected epic Julia melt-down.  The stimulus that caused the tantrum?  Poop.  Of course it was poop.  A ridiculous amount of time and energy in this house goes into dealing with the kids' pooping peculiarities.

In this case, Julia, who had already had her dessert and was looking for more, had been asked to clean up the mess of toys on the dining room floor before receiving a second dessert.  As she sat on the floor putting away matchbox cars, she started letting her gas rip and giggling about it.  Thus began the conversation that brought her to her emotional breaking point:

ME: Who's tooting?
JULIA: (giggling) Me!
ME: Do you need to go poop?
JULIA: (turning sullen) I don't waaaant to.
ME: Well, if you need to go, you'd better go try.
JULIA: But Mama, I don't WANT to.
ME: Julia, you keep holding your poop and that's why you're getting constipated.  It's not good for you.
JULIA:  But Mama!  Pooping is so BORING.

Tough s*%t, Jules.  Literally.

I then told her that I certainly wasn't feeding her more dessert if she was holding her poop and refusing to go.  Next thing I knew, Julia had gone off the deep end.

JULIA: (standing up and stomping towards the bathroom) FINE!  I'll poop and poop FOREVER and I'll NEVER STOP!

I called her back and reprimanded her for her fresh behavior, and told her to continue her clean-up until she felt like she was willing to try pooping without throwing a fit.

All quickly calmed down and the melt-down crisis seemed nearly averted, until Ethan moseyed into the room and remarked flippantly, "So.  I hear Julia is going to poop and poop forever and never stop."

Cue the hysterical screaming from Julia.  We were EMBARRASSING her.  STOP LAUGHING AT HER.  Oh, what a cruel world, I tell you.  Ethan actually had to leave the room and go hide in the kitchen so he could laugh.  Part of what made the situation especially comical was that Julia, for whatever reason, had decided to eat her dinner and dessert wearing these plastic pink sunglasses:

Watching her wail at the injustice of the whole pooping disaster while tears poured from behind her sunglasses just added a whole new level of ridiculousness.

Though Julia had refused to poop, Madeleine at least took advantage of the suggestion and suddenly, mid-Julia melt-down, declared her need to poop, and once she was on the potty, she was a happy little clam, singing songs at the top of her lungs while polluting the bathroom air.  In fact, she was a little too comfortable on the toilet, insisting she wasn't yet done even after nearly a half hour of potty party time.

MADELEINE: (15 minutes in) Uh Daddy, can you close the door and get me some toys?
ETHAN: Madeleine, let's not turn this into a giant poop excursion.
MADELEINE: (brightly) I want a giant poop excursion!

And in other Madeleine news, she and I made a new pact and we are now BFFs.  Here's how the whole arrangement went down:

MADELEINE: Mom, really, really please, can I be your best friend?
ME: Sure!
MADELEINE: Oh, thank you.  NOW I remember my friends!

Aw yeah, that's right.  Madeleine and I are BESTIES.

Julia and I are now friends again too.  Filled with remorse over her outburst, she presented me with the following picture as a peace offering:

Thanks, Julia.  Now I remember my friends.

And on a final note, guess who finally admitted to me, "Mom, I guess I feel like NOW I really DO need to poop," and is sitting on the pot a good 45 minutes after her bedtime?  Chattering away at me through the closed door, chipper as can be, updated me on every single random thought that goes through her head as she voids her bowels?  "Mom?  What if there was INFINITY people going pee and INFINITY people going poop at the same time and they never flushed the TOILET?  Even when the HOUSE was knocked down!?"

Honestly, how can she think pooping is so boring when it's her happy yappy time?  Fun times, I'm telling you.  Fun times.