With 3 boys under 6, Buggy Blogger mum to J (5), B (4) and S (2) certainly has her hands full. This week, it’s all … so sorry … about poos and taboos.

Poo glorious poo, warm, smelly and musty. While we're in the mood …

… actually, I'm not often in the mood to discuss poo so I'd personally prefer to leave it there. However, as B seems bent on dropping(s) it into dialogue every 5 minutes, I'm afraid I just have to faeces up to it (sorry!).

What is the fixation? Is it my encouraging wince every time he utters the word in public, or the regular calls to avoid the doggy doings on our daily walk to school, or the fact that I'm prepping S for potty training so congratulate him every time he produces and owns up to it? Whatever the case, I'm ashamed to admit our conversation often sounds straight out of the gutter … or, let's face it, the sewage pipes … far more often than I'd like.

Worse still, B's just had the chance to delve further … quite literally alas … into his new infatuation. Screamingly, the hitherto constipated S recently managed to miss his nappy entirely and spectacularly decorate the living room floor. (My fault I confess for lacing his milk with prune juice.) The under-6 crowd was positively wowed. I was not. Horrified, I scooped up S and whisked him to the bathroom for operation bottom clear-up, leaving strict instructions to his big brothers to back off. To no avail, however, as B soon trailed in behind me brandishing poo-smeared fingers and a mischievous grin. Ugh. I felt at once sick, cross and pretty rubbish in the parent-in-control stakes. All in all, it was a rather crappy afternoon in more ways than one.

But let's not bog ourselves down with all this toilet talk. After all, there are other pressing matters that B wants to get off his chest in addition to those pressing to get out of his derriere. Though he was originally slow to talk, these days he barely lets you get a word in edgeways. And it's usually about some frowned-upon topic that you'd normally hush up in front of children … and a fair number of grown ups … lest they can't sleep at night.

There’s the perennial favourite, the discussion of death as fretted over by J way back when. B's now taken over the baton as our chief death obsessive. He fires off random questions about the farmyard friends that we read extensively about (but rarely actually see in the flesh being city folk) which we apparently … gasp … eat: “What happens when the animals die?” “Does it hurt when we cut them with a knife and fork?” “Is a turkey a dead chicken?” (Poultry excuse for a comment on death I know but I couldn't resist including it.)

And then this week – hot on the heels of the classic “are skeletons pretending to be dead?” – we had this exchange:
B “Why are those people going into the church?”.
Me “Well, they might be going in to worship or taking part in some community group, or perhaps they’re just looking for a quiet moment”
B “ Or perhaps someone is deaded?”
Me “Yes, it might be a funeral I guess. In which case they’re going in to, erm, celebrate the life and all the good things about the person who has died.”
B “So if you do good things do you get dead?”
Me (sighs) “No, no, the family and friends just want to remember the best bits about this person’s life. But these things didn’t actually cause the person to die.”
B “ And now they’re going to put him into a suitcase?” …
Me: “Well, yes kind of. A person-sized suitcase.”

What a lovely idea I thought to myself as I imagined the deceased packing their bags … and themselves … in preparation for their next Big journey. Less lovely if they'd have to travel via Terminal 5, mind.

When he's not preoccupying himself with the minutiae of snuffing it, B's also fairly keen on discussing crime. I don't know if it's just coincidence but he's recently come into some cast-off horizontal striped PJs straight out of Porridge and seems simultaneously to have developed an obsession with robbers. Fuel was added to the fire when we stumbled past what looked like the set of The Bill where an ostentatious arrest scene was being filmed. B's eyes were practically goggling out of his head. The ante has subsequently been upped on his robber-related questioning.

His conversation is peppered with question such as “Can robbers …:
– open gates
– break down walls
– grow bigger than trees
– kill animals
– cause mummy to have a hissy fit if mentioned just one more time
– poo?

Sigh. I guess I should just be happy that the young lad has an enquiring mind and is obviously enjoying investigating the world … and the waste matter … all around him. In fact, come to think of it. I reckon he has all the hallmarks of a young detective in the making. I can see it now; he’d be Inspector Pooseau in the case of the Stink Panther. Or how about Inspector (dead) Horse? Oh no, I’ve got it; Sher-Lock up-your-valuables- there-are-tree-sized-robbers-at-the-gate-of-your Holmes.

Excrementary my dear Reader.

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