the case for chocolate

We've hit a phase where children who have to go potty, will resist going potty until the last absolute possible second. Even more than the girls, the boy is especially guilty of this action.

It is particularly bad if he is engaged with something. You name it - a toy, a book, a game, a dead fly. He will squirm and cross his legs and bounce. But if I ask him if he needs to use the restroom, he'll say, "NO. NO. I'm fine. I'm just .... dancing."

I try to coax him to just go sit and try, but he won't listen. Until another few minutes have passed and his dancing turns in to a full body convulsion and he screams out in a panic, "I HAVE GOT TO GO POTTY!!!" and then his arms start flailing around in the air and he gets hysterical.

"ARGH! HELP! ME! HELP! ME! I HAVE GOT TO POTTY!"

To help encourage the children to use the restroom - before their bladder explodes - I have initiated this little game of asking the kids if perhaps the food that they eat changes the color of their "output." If they have orange juice for breakfast, as soon as I see them start to do the potty jig, I will tell them, "I'll bet that your pee-pee is going to be orange today. Quick, let's go check!!" Or, if they eat blueberries, I'll suggest that maybe it will turn blue. Watermelon surely will make it pink. This almost always works and the kids will excitedly run in and see if perhaps today they will see a new color.

They never do.

(Except for that day they drank their body weight in carrot juice.)

A few weeks ago, we went to a birthday party. At that birthday party was a cake. And on that cake was some themed character, I can't recall who. But it was lavishly decorated in blue and yellow frosting. The kids loved it and ate at least two pieces, each.

The next day we went out to a restaurant for dinner.

While I brought the girls in the bathroom to wash hands before we sat down to eat, they both informed me that they needed to go potty. So they did. As I'm standing outside of their stall doors, fighting the urge to rush in and lift them up and down off the commode in my expedited fashion, I hear Elizabeth yell out, "Oh my gosh! My poop is GREEN!" Just then Carolyn yells out, "Oh my GOSH! My poop is green, TOO!"

Surely the kids are just kidding around I think. But when I go in to help them flush, I take a quick glance and sure enough, their poop IS green. Think Kelly Green. Saint Patrick's Day Green. BRIGHT green.

My first thought upon seeing my children's BRIGHT GREEN poop was that they must be fighting something. Maybe they had some kind of virus?

The girls wash their hands and we rejoin Charlie and the boys at the table. The situation is forgotten until later, when we are walking out to the car. I catch sight of a bright green car zooming out of the parking lot and I remember.

"Charlie, it was so weird, when I took the girls in to the bathroom they both went poop and it was bright green. Like grass. I don't remember ever seeing anything like that before." My husband looked at me with a surprised expression and said, "Really? That is crazy because William went poop and his was bright green, too."

We continued walking to the car, quietly debating why our children's poop was bright green. They certainly didn't seem sick and their appetites were just fine. When I asked Charlie if they'd eaten anything unusual in the past few days he said, "The only thing that I can think of is the cake that they had at the party." I stopped in my tracks and said, "You mean the birthday cake with the blue and yellow frosting smothered all over it?"

He gave me a puzzled look and said, "Yeah. Why?"

The light bulb went off.

"What happens when you mix blue and yellow?"

The kids, who were listening to all of this, yelled out "YOU GET GREEN!"

And THAT is why our cakes will be frosted with chocolate, forever more.

I've since discovered this website, which included a piece written by a guy working towards a degree in biochemistry. He conducted a study while he was in college and recruited several students that would eat various dye-laden food and then record what color came out the other end. My conclusion that the green poop came from mixing blue and yellow was erroneous. It actually had to do with the metabolism of blue dye.

Suffice to say, you can find anything on the internet and the blue Buzz Lightyear cake we had considered for the children's birthday is downright out.

I dunno. There just seems to be something unhealthy and toxic-like going on in your digestive system when bright green poop is produced.

Wouldn't you agree?