Adventures in Potty-Training

OK, we've had some interesting moments over the years, given that the boys all were tough nuts to crack (mostly because they couldn't care less about being wet or poopy, which made them less than motivated to stop thinking whatever grand Freivald thoughts they were thinking in order to figure out a path to a toilet) and G took four years or so to train, so I've had my share of wet and/or poopy predicaments.

Today's, however, was unusual in that I was snatching pee and poop from the jaws of success. sort of. Timmy is a little mimic, always wanting to do, eat, drink, see, go, hear, whatever anyone else is doing. (Those who say, "Well, in a big family I'm sure the little ones learn a lot from the older ones" have clearly not spent much time around Dunc or Alex, who were/are quite stubborn about not doing what others are doing or want them to do and quite shy for people who grew up in a crowd. Trust me, Tim is unique as a child in THIS large family, whether or not he's unique for a young child in A large family.) So it was not that hard to get him to sit on the toilet and to figure out that he was to pee while sitting there. I haven't pushed the underwear/self-initiating part of it, because when school is in I would rather wait till everyone is off and when everyone is off I want to wait until they're back at school--really, in which situation would I *choose* to spend my week cleaning and changing messy underwear? Roughly, the situation in which the child is with someone else that week is pretty much the only time I like to make that choice. Unless you want to come and take even a two-hour stint of an Underwear Watch, don't criticize.

But anyway, today I got K down for a nap while to boys were having lunch, and came down to find Tim just a couple feet from the bathroom in the classic "I'm way pooping in my diaper now" stance.

"Timmy, are you pooping?" I was so excited to catch him in the act.

"No." He was not so excited, but a peek in his diaper revealed that he had in fact just started a nice little poop and so I decided to be more proactive than I have been and plucked him up and plopped him on the toilet.

"See, you can poop on the potty! THIS is where the poop goes. You can do the rest in the potty!"

"Oh, yeah!" Long pause.

"Tim, are you done?"

"Yeah. I done." He seemed pretty done, so I started to wipe him--and couldn't figure out why I wasn't making any progress until on the next swipe he pretty much pooped right into the handful of toilet paper. Not the cute little poop that he'd started in his diaper, either, but nice, messy, mushy stuff that smeared all over his little toddler tush.

"OH, OK, so you're not done. Let's wait a bit." Nothing. Nothing at all. We both sat there and stared down into the toilet.

"Ready for me to wipe you?"

"Yup!" So I did. And once I got to the point where I felt he was pretty much cleaned up, I gave one last pass and--yup, right in my hand, which was moving, so it got smeared back all over his bottom.

"Hey, Tim?" Subtle grab of toilet paper and wiping of hand. "Stay here, don't move, finish peeing and pooping. I think I need some wipes at this point." (Note that I did add in the "peeing.") As i walked across the house, hand still poopy (I am nothing if not practical--I still have a messy bottom to wipe, and at this point I'm not discounting further contamination when I go to do it yet again, so why would I stop to wash the hand yet?), Alex was in ask- repetitively mode.

"Mom? Excuse me, Mom? Mom? Excuse me, Mom? Can I have chocolate milk? Mom? Excuse me, Mom, can I have chocolate milk? Uh, Mom?" One would think he'd bother to find me, see where I was, what I was doing, anything, but no, he was just wandering around the house fiddling with some Lego guy in his hands and asking and asking and asking. He does that, though, gets stuck in a loop and forgets what he was doing. I would bet he no longer even wanted chocolate milk at that point.

"Alex, I'm dealing with poop right now, don't ask me at this moment."

"OH, OK, Mom." I stripped off my sweatshirt--this was officially a Poop Incident now, and OK, I admit that I noted a pathetic glimmer of pride that I could get off a sweatshirt around a poopy hand while in motion and maintain hygenic clothing conditions--got the wipes with the clean hand, and made my way back to the bathroom just in time for it to no longer be Right This Moment anymore. "Hey, Mom? Excuse me, Mom? Can I have....Um, can I have....Um, excuse me, Mom can I have, um, uhhhh---"

"Chocolate milk, Alex? No, you can't. Still dealing with poop here." Alex couldn't decide whether to be happy he now knew what he'd wanted or disappointed that I still couldn't get it for him.

Into the bathroom, wipe off Tim, ask him one last time if he's REALLY done, and then I declared it time to wash hands (especially mine) and get him on the step stool. I was making a big fuss about what a big boy he is to poop on the potty and how nice and sudsy I can get our hands, when Tim started saying, "Oh, no! Oh, no!" And a sound that the back of my mind had registered just ten seconds before was belatedly identified and brought to the front on my mind--the sound of a stream of liquid on wood. Of COURSE. In all that pooping and wiping and sitting, of course he'd wait for the handwashing to PEE, even though I HAD MENTIONED that he should finish peeing AND pooping. I did. I really did.

"Tim, did you just pee on the sink door, honey?" (Note to self--once again tell Liam when he gets home that I'm sorry he's the first. If this had been my first and not my seventh, I would have been sobbing in frustration and disgust and generally flipping out over the need to sanitize half the house and bleach my hand.)

"No. I pee on my SOCKS. They WET--I need NEW socks. Oh no!"

So, I took off the socks, wiped down the sink cabinet, and found that the floor wasn't too bad because the pee had dribbled down onto Tim's pants. Washed hands again, plopped his wet stuff in the basement, found Tim a diaper, and took him up for a nap, where he and Bear and I had a nice talk about what kind of underpants he'd like to wear soon now that he's pooping on the potty and all.

I define "soon" as "some time before kindergarten if hell freezes over." Though if I can get poopy when he's sitting ON the toilet in what still qualifies as a mom-mitigated success, then I don't think I've got much to lose at this point.

A Reason for Stay-At-Home Moms to Get Sick Days

There are many illnesses a person without daycare can "work" through out of sheer necessity--one's spouse only gets so many sick days, after all, and he'll probably need them himself to take a day or two off to recover every time he gets a tummy bug on a weekend that you got to enjoy Thursday night while nursing a baby or while he was off on a business trip. But just as there are valid reasons for taking time off work when ill (not spreading germs to others, being too feverish to think, unable to take the train while having diarrhea, etc), there is a reason why moms should not be left to tend to children when they have a simple cold.

Sense of smell, it turns out, is pretty crucial to this particular line of work.

This morning I dropped of G at camp at 9 and headed right for Verona Park--it was just a few miles up the road from the camp, has a decent playground, and a lake with a mile-long walking path I could use to get in some exercise while killing the time till Toys R Us opened at 10. We had some birthday gifts and such to get, and I saw little point in going home where I'd probably get K settled in for a morning nap and end up heading out just before lunch or cutting into the precious minutes of Tim's nap. We had a lovely time at the playground, though my intentions of letting Tim run off some steam before sitting in a stroller or sitting in a car seat or sitting in a shopping cart were slightly undone by Tim's desire to sit in a toddler swing...for twenty-plus minutes. Did you know that between 9 and 10 am both the toddler and older-kids sections of the playground are shaded at Verona Park, but the swings are still in full sun? The only reason Tim got out of that swing after twenty minutes was because I couldn't hear his protests anymore through my fried brains. I nursed K while he took a few turns down the slide, we walked our mile with Tim declaring his love for every "PUPPY!" we saw along the way, we got in the car and went to TRU, we got our gifts and got out quickly because K was starting to fuss, and then we headed home.

Once there, I had the simultaneous demands of K wanting to nurse/sleep, Tim wanting to eat, and me needing to pee. Going roughly in reverse order I took care of those issues, giving Tim a yogurt which for some reason he took to the bench by the kitchen window instead of to the table, standing by the bench while using it as a table for his yogurt. When I got up to change K, he asked for a yogurt shake, and since we were out of more yogurt I gave him one. I then went to settle K down for a nap, which she did not settle for, when I heard Tim thump and cry. I returned to the kitchen to find him slipping and sliding in spilled yogurt shake (and now that I thought about it, what IS the benefit to making yogurt for kids easier to spill, huh?) and with less sympathy than I would have had if he hadn't spilled yesterday's shake as well, I plopped him on the steps and mopped up the bench and floor and then his feet, and then stripped off his yogurt-soaked shirt and pants. It was after I'd thrown the pants over by the basement door and gone to throw out the paper towels and returned to the scene with the intention of wiping the yogurt off Tim and putting him to bed that I noticed the brown streak on the floor where the pants had slid to a stop...and the brown smudges around Tim's feet...and the brown smears down both legs. It was at this moment that Tim helpfully put his hand to his hip and took it away all brown and informed me, "Mommy, oh, look, I poopy."

No wonder the kid didn't want to sit at the table to eat! Up to the bathroom, where I could change him on a floor that can be bleached before rinsing him in the tub--one rear end, one back, one tummy, two legs, two hips, two floors, four hands and half a box of wipes full of poop by the time we were done, and the dried-on nature of the stuff around the perimeter indicated that this had clearly been here a while. That's why it got so all over--plenty of time for Tim's movements to spread the fragrant stuff all over without Mom having any idea what kind of mess was developing in his pants due to her failing nose....Though I'm SURE folks at Toys R Us knew!

When I can smell, no dirty diaper goes unchanged for long, and even a breast-fed infant poop can be detected across a large room even with AC or fans going, I'm that good. Without my nose, I'm lost, handicapped, unable to perform one of the four vital duties of a mother--keep them alive, keep them fed, keep them in clean diapers, and keep sacred the Nap Time.

Not even vomiting or fever can mess me up as much as a stuffed nose. Jake, I can't work the rest of the day...At least until G comes home and HIS nose can tell me when Tim needs changing.