So this week Garry James left something for Santa under the Christmas tree. It was a warm, steamy gift, but unfortunately, it wasn’t cookies.

What amazed me is that we were all in the room when Garry did it. The living area, kitchen, and dining are all together at our house in one big room. Our Christmas tree sits in the corner of this space, presents piled underneath it. On this rainy Christmas vacation all six of the kids, along with Scott and I have been just hanging out, some of us reading books, the boys stacking blocks in front of the fire, all of us together like in a little log cabin with just four walls, only bigger, with a tile floor.

Thank goodness for the tile because Garry’s gift for Santa would have stained the carpet. I’m surprised we didn’t smell it. Not right away, we didn’t. In fact I didn’t smell anything until Garry James came to me and said, “I pooped under the Christmas tree.”

“What?” I answered like Luke our junior higher answers “what” when he’s heard me, but doesn’t want to understand what I’m saying.

“I pooped under the Christmas tree,” Garry James repeated himself.

“You can’t be serious,” I said to our two year old like he was a forty year old person telling me this. My mind just couldn’t comprehend why a human being would do such a thing. Even a three feet tall human being.

Maybe Garry was talking about one of the dogs pooping under the tree. Perhaps he was confused about who’d done the pooping.

I looked over at Nahla, our yellow lab, on her rug across the room. She was sound asleep, being a very good dog because the last thing Nahla wanted was to be thrown out in the rain. Plus Nahla has never relieved herself in the house so I just couldn’t fathom her sneaking over to place a pile under the tree.

“Show me,” I said to Garry James, still operating in unbelief that there really was boy poop beneath our lovely tree.

Garry James took my hand like the sweet little tow-headed tot he is and led me to his dirty deed. There was the poop pretty as you please right beside a neatly wrapped present for Grandma. Bigger than dog poop and now I could smell it.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said to Garry James. “You really did that? With all of us here not seeing you?” Standing before the evidence, I still struggled to accept it. Perhaps that was rubber poop. The kids playing a trick on bed rest mom to get me off the couch.

“What did Garry do?” asked John about five feet away playing with blocks. To John’s seven year old credit there was a couch between him and the poop, but still, I was about as far away from the dukey as John and I could sure smell it now.

“Don’t you smell it?” I said not only to John, but to everyone in the room. “I don’t smell nothin'” said five year old Joey, playing blocks with John.

“Scott,” I said patiently. “Come look what your son left under the tree for Santa.” Over at the kitchen table, Scott was studying a history book.

When one of the kids does something I don’t like, I make sure to let Scott know that it is his offspring not mine, who has disappointed me.

Any other time, I would say, “my” son or “my” daughter because I’m a proud momma, but I have to say that in all my twenty years of motherhood, I have never experienced a child pooping under the Christmas tree. This certainly qualified as one of those “look what YOUR son has done” times.

Scott walked over to where Garry James and I stood beside the tree. When he saw the poop, he bent over laughing.

“Don’t laugh,” I scolded. “Laughing will only encourage more of that!” I pointed to the poop like it was a family member. Like More of That was one of those relatives you moaned about when they showed up at your door on Christmas day. You know the kind: they come, they drink, they burp on the pumpkin pie, they tell off-color jokes, and you quickly send the kids upstairs praying they haven’t learned any new dirty words or appalling tricks like… pooping under the Christmas tree… I guess kids don’t have to be taught bad manners by bad relatives. It seems children are born with bad manners. It is good manners they must be taught.

A dear old lady once said over the birth of a precious baby, “Look at that. Another little sinner born into the world today.”

I was surprised by this statement. Seeing a baby never made me think of sin. But how right that little old saint was. Anyone who has lived with a two year old knows that “children are sinful from their mother’s womb” as the Bible says.

So apparently potty-training has hit a whole new level at our house now. We’ve had poop in the tub, poop on the back porch, poop in countless pants, but never have we had poop beside the Christmas presents.

Now I know why God makes two year olds so cute. If Garry James wasn’t that adorable imp standing there holding my hand admiring his poop with me today, I might have done what my dad did to our dogs when I was growing up: rubbed his nose in it.