We have Shawshanked through the shit tunnel

Literal is cool when it's figurative, or at least mistakenly so, but when you literally have a shitty summer...well that's something you wish was just a lazy cliche. Here, at the Ewy residence, we have slogged through more poo than when Andy Dufresne escaped from prison. We have Shawshanked through the shit tunnel and, as of right now, we're not sure if we're on the other side or not.

You see, the boys both ended up with peri-anal strep. Quin succinctly described it as "a sore throat in your butt." I'm not sure how badly it hurts the boys, I just now they've got something like Rudolph syndrome with bright red, Santa-guiding heinies. It's so bad that they have stopped pooping. The other night I lay awake wondering if Otto were going to explode. And he would eventually. Before that awful experience, however, he and his brother would have to be tortured by their musunderstanding parents.

I was pulling out all the tricks: the comparisons to other kids who were "probably using the toilet and riding two-wheeled bikes as I shout!" And even painting macabre scenarios of physical damage: "You're poop is going to rupture your tiny torso and fill up this house." Unfortunately, the boys love that that could be possible. They also have relished the opportunity to talk about nothing but poo. I admit that, on occasion, I'll break protocol and use a quick fart joke to gain their affection. It's an easier comedy audience than Russell Simmon's Def Comedy Jam.

So once we realized that we were indeed punishing children who were simply scared of the pain that pooping caused them--yes, mother, somewhere Freud is rubbing his hands and cackling--we became a fragile family of angry whisperers. At any moment shit could happen. We just need to handle it like adults. In other words, Sarah probably should take care of it.

Stubbor--resilient bastar--children, day 5: Somehow they're smiling.

Mind you, this has happened all summer. Otto had the peri-anal strep, and then Quin, and then Otto again. All summer. And much of that time they shared baths and wrestled and passed back and forth the sore throats in their butts. How did they get this? Apparenlty we're such bad parents we overlooked their having actual strep (a sore throat in your throat,) and it moved through their body and manifested itself in the Rolling Stones red-lip logo in their bums.

We've gone to the doctor about four times now and, with a combo of increased liquid intake and this magical stuff called Miralax, we have managed to get some movement. Actually, "some" is a bit light for the resolve-testing bowelquakes that have rocked this family. In scenes not unlike a birth, the boys have unleashed fantastic turds. These things are marvels. They are huge and, as Otto once stated, "like a baby animal." They're also like archaelogical records with our shit summer represented in layers. "Oh, look there's when we were carefree and eating pizza," I might say to Sarah, who's emotionally exhausted from helping a small boy wrestle out a cinder block. "And here's where we were down to just plums and prayer," I add as I beat the unflushable beast with a toilet brush.

A lot of details, but that's pretty much what you need to know about our summer. The big news is probably that for the first time ever the boys have been out of school and enjoying days of play with a nanny, a young woman who, after the last couple of months, has had tested her aspirations of working with children. 

One day your dreams are getting rich and famous and living in a castle in the sky. The next you're just hoping your boys will go poop. We're pretty close to that dream realized; now just to make sure we're all on schedule for school.