Talking shit

I have a secret. I encourage potty talk in our house. Poo and pee are funny and everyone knows it so, for instance, when my daughter slips on a stray sock in the hallway and bumps her head, we point our fingers at the sock and say in earnest you're a poo poo sock! And then we turn around and stick our butts out at the sock. And my daughter is no longer crying.

It's childish. I know. And largely inappropriate. And many things about excrement are not funny at all. But many things are hilarious. Now the dinner table is another story. The rule is that if we talk about potty stuff at the dinner table then we have to talk about chicken fingers and salad while on the toilet. That makes them laugh every time and the distraction causes them to forget what they were saying.

There are times when we take shit seriously. Like the other day we were hopping trains for the afternoon and ended up at Sunnyvale station when I was suddenly gripped by the runs. Thankfully and not a moment too soon I spied a public bathroom at the station. It had a keypad which worried me, but then we saw someone exit so we ran and caught the door. The kids came in with me and after warning them about what was coming, they huddled in the furthest corner.

Him: Do you have diarrhea?
Me: Yes, sweetie. It seems so. Did you ever have diarrhea?
Him: Yes. I don't like it. It's like the kaki flies out of your tushy at light speed.
Me: Exactly.
Her: You stink mommy.

But back to potty talk. I urge you to incorporate potty talk into your arsenal of distraction techniques. Kids are fighting? Go up and smell both of their butts and say, who made a poo poo? I guarantee they will stop fighting and fall over laughing. This is probably only worthwhile if both are out of diapers.

I'll understand if you don't want your kids to play at our house any more.

Wiped out

How is it possible that I gave birth to two people so completely different from one another? I tell you the recessive gene pool is expansive. Vast.

We're having trouble getting my son to wipe himself (sorry, that wasn't much of a segue). He's five. I'm sure this is normal and to be honest part of me wants to keep doing it because I do a better job than he does, but he should really be wiping his own ass (I keep hearing that little boy in Adam Sandler's movie Big Daddy,  I wipe my on ass! I wipe my own ass!). Anyway, my husband told him he's not doing it anymore and I said, I guess me neither. And then my son didn't take a dump for three days. This is what we are up against. So I said fine, I will wipe and then after, you will practice, as in wipe with no threat of getting poop on his fingers. We've been doing this for a week or so. And yesterday, when he didn't want to reach over to get the toilet paper because he would have to close his eyes so he wouldn't have to see the poop and then he might fall and land in the toilet (his words), I realized the extent to which he is not psyched about poop.

Compare that to a recent conversation I had with my daughter. She'd been playing in leaves outside and then came in and wanted her pants off because something was itching her. You mean the dried up maple leaves in your underwear? Is that it? I pull down her pants and a bunch of brown flecks of leaf fall to the ground and a very nonchalant conversation ensues.

her: (bending over to touch the leaves) mommy, is it poo poo?
me: no, honey
her: spider?
me: no, it's a leaf.
her: oh, leaf. (shrugs and giggles). Leaf is not poo poo mommy. Silly.

Same parents. Swear.

Restroom Stall

Tonight we took the kids out for dinner to one of these all you can eat salad and extras places. They like going there. It's sort of cheap and no one cares when you spill. Or shout. Halfway through dinner my son turns to tell me he has to go poop. This is a rare occasion. This is a child who does not poop outside of his home. He NEVER poops at school. Or anywhere besides our toilet. So anyway we head over to the ladies' room and one of the toilets is overflowing so we go into the other one. There are only two. And after some minor insecurity about this whole toilet seat cover business (how will the pee get through? the poo poo is not going in the water!) he settles into his usual twenty minute transaction.

Meanwhile women are starting to line up because there's no other toilet and so I mention to my son that if he's done we need to leave quickly so that someone else can use the toilet. He's not done. Another five minutes passes as he's pushing and groaning and now I overhear women saying can we just use the men's room? And I'm starting to want to hurry him because I've been on their side and I know that time in a restroom is relative to which side of the stall you're on but I look down at this little boy hunched over this toilet while his face turns red and his eyeballs bug out during each push and I take a deep breathe (not too deep. It's a public restroom after all) and we wait. And I chuckle to myself having discovered that restroom stall is both a noun and a verb.

A girl and her flower

This morning my daughter woke up and told me she needed to use the poppy (her term of endearment for potty) and when I took off her diaper it was DRY. She didn't pee all night. This is mind blowing. For a girl who sleeps so deeply that she unconsciously shimmies her way under her brother's bed all the way to the wall without waking up, it is remarkable. And that is why I am currently remarking on it.

Anyway, she peed on poppy and then yelled at me for trying to poor the pee into the toilet for her because she wanted to do it. I apologized. It's her poppy after all (can you tell that I love saying poppy?) Then she wiped herself and wiped her nose too. Oops. That was a teaching moment. Then tonight after her bath we put on her diaper and in the middle of good-night songs she asked for her poppy again, relieved herself and then told her Aba she didn't want her diaper anymore. Tonight she's going commando. Wish us luck.

And to be honest I don't think she's especially mature or tuned in to her excretory needs. I think she just wants better access to her vagina. Like many her age this is a girl who really loves the ole v'jay. So when she's not in a diaper she likes to lay back and "relax". Though sometimes with gusto. When she's in a diaper she often uses her belly button or her toes as a proxy but obviously nothing's as good as the real deal. You go girl.

Super Nanny and Elmo Undies RULE!

I'm not too self righteous or embarrassed for that matter to admit that on occasion my husband and I watch Super Nanny. Watching television is about the only thing I want to do at 9:00 pm after my kids are finally in bed. Plus watching Super Nanny in particular makes me feel like it could all be worse (I could have two sets of twin boys under the age of five with a husband in Iraq, for example). My husband is a big fan, mostly for the reassurance that his son isn't the only impossible kid out there.

Yesterday's episode featured a lovely couple - both professors in Hawaii - and their two boys age three and one. And the areas for improvement were in potty training and time-outs.

She made it look so easy. Just tell him he's a big boy, put him in underwear and miraculously he'll be able to stay dry. We'd once been that naive and our boy defiled every corner of the house. So we bribed him with chocolate raisins which worked for a time until the lavatory incident on a recent trip to New York. Over the last six months he'd been in underwear, pull-ups, back to diapers, back to pull-ups. He didn't know if he was coming or going (and when he was going, it wasn't in the potty).

And of course the Super Nanny is famous for the "naughty spot" - the place to go for time outs. We're not the best at time-out. If he won't stay in his room, I usually put my son in his crib (he doesn't climb out) but then he shrieks like a mermaid and slobbers all over himself and puts his whole fist in his mouth until he gags. Once he even threw up. It's not pleasant.

My husband and I decided to heed Super Nanny's advice and this morning I told my son that he would be wearing underwear from now on. After breakfast he peed on the potty, said bye bye to his diaper, picked out the Elmo undies for this auspicious occasion (the ones with the giant Elmo face on the tush) and got dressed without a fuss. I told his teachers at school that we were done with diapers and I apologized in advance if he peed all over the school. They were supportive having witnessed his previous potty prowess. And I'm proud to tell you right now that he was dry all day. Well, almost all day.

This evening he decided he wanted to color in my checkbook. When I told him to put the check book away he refused. I counted to three and he stood his ground. So I put him in the corner in the hallway and told him it was the naughty spot. He screamed and flailed himself at me and tried to escape for about twenty minutes. He also peed in his pants which made him even more upset (I made a pee pee on Elmo!). But this time I stood my ground. Eventually he was able to stand in the corner for a full two minutes without saying a word. Then he said he was sorry and I gave him a hug. We picked out Thomas the Tank Engine undies, got changed and moved on with our lives.

I can't believe you just peed on me

I came to understand a new feature of the male anatomy this evening. We've been potty training my son for the last few months and are currently in a set back period after a stressful experience with an airplane lavatory. We're basically back to square one after having weeks of successful potty encounters. One look at the lavatory and all of our hard work went, literally, down the toilet. Now I can't even get my son to go near the potty. And he has the nerve to demand to be changed the minute he's finished his business.

Tonight, after a long fun day in Santa Cruz with friends, he had a bath with his aba (dad) and asked mommy to put on his pajamas. As I was putting on his pull-up (don't even get me started on pull-ups), he started to pee into the pull-up. The rest of the conversation goes like this:

Me: Are you kidding me?
Him: I made a pee pee.
Me: Do you still have more pee pee?
Him: No, change me mommy!
Me: Are you done making pee pee?
Him: Change me mommy!

I take off the now wet pull-up and notice that his penis is sort of dripping so I try to cover it with the wet pull-up. It stops dripping. I go to get another pull-up and come back and he's now peeing on the carpet. So I put the pull-up to his crotch and tell him to stop (genius, I know). He stops and keeps dripping. So I get closer to put the new pull-up on him and he pees all over me.

Me: I can't believe you just peed on me!
Him: Where's the red spray cleaner?

Who knew that penises drip when there's still pee pee in there? And how would I know that? Why do I even bother with potty training? He'll figure it out eventually right? I mean, there were no kids in my high school class who didn't know how to use a potty. A big toilet even. We ALL figured it out. I'm sure my son will figure this one out too. He figured out the red spray bottle was carpet cleaner. He's no dummy right? My husband doesn't even know that...and HE makes pee pee on the potty all the time.

I need a shower.