Playing Toilet Mystery Grab

As is normal for kiddo's around Clayton's age, he is fascinated by the toilet. I've got to start making sure that bathroom door is shut! He keeps going in there to play in the toilet. He especially loves to put stuff in the toilet. He's bound to ruin my plumbing! The other day I caught him stuffing an entire bag's worth of cotton balls in there. Today it was a washcloth, a sock, and maybe something else. When I caught him at it, the water was disturbingly cloudy and colored a purplish brown. Was this from the socks and washcloth, or from something else more sinister? There was nothing for it. I had to reach in there with my bare hands and retrieve said items. As I did, I felt something else more solid underneath them. I recoiled in disgust! What to do? It might be poo. My family is known to forget to flush from time to time. The water was too murky, and the mystery object was too far down in the neck of the toilet to be able to see it. Did I really want to reach in and pick up someone's poo with my bare hands? (Would that really be so much worse than the many other disgusting things I've had to do in my line of duty?) Clayton was insistently saying "Ball! Ball!" If it's a ball, I definitely couldn't flush it. "Oh well, here goes!" I thought as I silently chanted my #1 lesson of motherhood: "Hands are washable. Hands are washable." I plunged my hand into the cold, murky, brown water and pulled out a large super ball. "Phew!" I felt around to make sure nothing else was there. Thankfully, that was it. As I washed my hands and steered my 17 month old out of the bathroom, I thought to myself, "We should add this to our list of 'Games for Bulimics: Toilet Mystery Grab.'"

(No, I'm not bulimic. But here are some of the other Games for Bulimics: Whole Milk Twirlers, the M&M game ...there were more. I can't think of them. We used to joke about Games for Bulimics. Oh well, I'll remember them later.)