I know you can relate, just by the title alone. At first when you have kids, you can’t imagine what life will be like when they are a little older (able to move around, talk, and have opinions). And then seemingly overnight, they are like tiny humans; small versions of yourself walking around. It’s awesome really, until you have to poop.
I love Summer to pieces, but not much gets under my skin more than when she cries as I shut the door to go the bathroom. She seriously comes out of nowhere, even when I’m being sneaky and escaping to my bathroom oasis. It’s not a fun job as it is, but everyone’s gotta do it – and being alone makes it a little nicer. I don’t escape her often, and sometimes we both end up in tears: she just wants to be with me and watch and I just want 5 minutes to myself locked away takin’ care of business.
A couple of months ago, Jordan came out of the bathroom with an idea. “You should write a children’s book about how even mommies poop and talk about the mom struggle of a simple task,” he said. I was on it. That night, I had the content drafted into a fun, yet simple, rhyming story of a mom and daughter playing out the daily bathroom fuss. Jordan couldn’t believe we could check that off the list already.
I was most worried about pictures. We can’t even draw stick figures, let alone pictures for a book to be published. We did a little digging and ultimately decided that Summer should be the star of the show. We used our iPhones and staged pictures throughout our home to match the words. Because we are conscious of her image being printed, we used an app to color the picture in a way that made key details blurry, but still artsy and pretty for the pages. We took pictures over the course of 2 days. We all had fun being in our own photo shoot and editing to perfection.
Jordan did research on the publishing piece of this project and got our account created and ready. We learned that you needed to upload a manuscript and a cover. Shoot…I was an English major at MSU, but didn’t know how to do a “real” manuscript. We learned from a video that the best way to upload content is to transfer it to a PowerPoint presentation so the format is aligned, consistent, and each text/picture fits on one specific page each. This was a little time-consuming, but certainly very fun.
Next, we needed to upload to the publishing site. Our first upload had 55 errors. (I was expecting more to be totally honest.) Most of the errors consisted of pictures and text being outside of the margins of the page. After revisions, our second upload had 15 errors. Our third upload had one error: the cover. The cover had to be uploaded separately and we just couldn’t figure out how to get it the correct size, centered, and showing the picture and text.
By now it was midnight and I knew I had to table it. I don’t like to stop in the middle of a project like this, especially being so close. But, I knew enough to know that we needed fresh eyes and a few more hours to get it. The next morning, I found a cover template (for free!) and aside from having to learn a little bit about image layering in a publishing system, it was so easy! The 3rd through 7th uploads were strictly cover revisions, requiring minor tweaks. The 8th upload was perfect and ready for the next steps.
Clicking that button was so exciting. I’ve always wanted to write a book. Granted, I never thought it would be about poop, but this was so fun! We got to write the description, set the price, and review back-end features and statistics of publishing. We now had to wait for Amazon to review (they ensure it is truly our own content, review copyright information, and get the link ready for purchase). They advised this could take 72 hours, but it was about 24 hours before it went live on Amazon.
This is certainly something we are very proud of, even though it’s built on a silly premise. We appreciate your support if you choose to purchase a copy (which you can do by following this link: https://www.amazon.com/Even-Mommies-Jordan-Starr-Rupkey/dp/B0875ZJ7Q6/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=even+mommies+poop&qid=1587220943&sr=8-1).
Happy reading (and pooping)!
The Rupkey Roost 