Totally tubular

This picture has nothing to do with anything except it's my daughter snuggled up with another mammal who has equally distinctive ears. 

My daughter had her fourth set of tubes put in on Monday morning because there was apparently a wall of infection behind her ear drums. Delightful. She's gotten so accustomed to this routine that she woke up, put on something comfy, came to give me a kiss goodbye and said, I'll see you after my ear surgery mommy. Just as casually as if she was saying, I'll see you after preschool. But this time she felt some of the nasty side affects of anesthesia. Namely the nausea. She was vomiting and had to stick around for a while. But by the afternoon she was awake again and in good spirits and retelling her ordeal to her brother - how she threw up on the nurse and in the toilet. Then she asked for matzoh with Nutella so we headed out to the porch to enjoy a mid-afternoon treat. And during our conversation she turned to me and asked why we were yelling. I guess she can hear now. And all of my yelling over the last few months has been medically validated.

More than meets the eye

The other day my son got a package in the mail - a belated birthday gift from a buddy of his. I had forgotten that a week before the child's mom had asked me what my son wanted for his birthday and after I begged her to please not buy him anything because I had just bought him a bunch of new toys and still he prefers to play with my camera, cell phone and hairdryer, she insisted to know what he wanted. So against my better judgment I told her that he seemed interested in his cousin's Transformers. Those vehicular robotic toys that are supposedly saving the world from the Force of Evil. Well don't be fooled. It's the Transformers themselves that are the Force of Evil. Here's what went down.

My mom actually bought him a Transformer for his birthday. We had both seen him play with his cousin's and thought he'd like one of his own. I picked it up for her in hell at the toy store. I got him a car and it said on the package that it was level 2 (easy) for age 4+. And it's not that I underestimate his fine motor skills or his mechanical intelligence - he's the one that figured out I have speaker phone on my cell, after all. But I had a suspicion, after having watched him try to play games marked for his age, that he would fiddle with it for a few moments and then get annoyed that it's a piece of junk and doesn't snap nicely back together. And I would have to show him how to do it. And that would suck for me because I have no interest in vehicular robots even if they are trying to save the universe. Once again, I was right. After he ripped it apart and saw all of the robotic innards underneath, he wanted it to be a car again. Here mommy. So I put it back together and thank God I picked the level 2 because it was plenty challenging. I failed to mention this important distinction when suggesting a Transformer to this friend. So she sends him a Transformer that is level THREE, age 5+. Two of them actually. The horror. The horror.

The first one is a motorcycle. He hasn't been holding it for more than ten seconds before it is transformed into a sinewy many-tentacled thing with one wheel here and the other stuck onto some other limb and I am thinking, George Jesus, how am I ever going to get this monster back together again. After a few minutes of jangling it around he hands it over. Here mommy. Now it's my turn to "play" with it. Cleansing breath.

For the next HOUR I am sitting on the couch trying to snap this mother effing piece of Made in China injection molded garbage back into a motorcycle. I actually start to feel sweat collect around my brow. Meanwhile, my two kids have now taken to playing with the handful of packing peanuts that came with the package. In the middle of what feels to me like a nationally televised Rubik's cube-a-thon (I suffer from performance anxiety) I look up and my kids have turned the packing peanuts into a winter wonderland. I am not exaggerating. Unfortunately I did not take a picture of this event but rest assured the entire living room floor, spilling into the hallway, kitchen and dining room, was covered in Styrofoam bits. And my motorcycle is still undone. And there's a blizzard in my home.

I rise to the occasion. Of course! I say, children of your father, you go and have yourselves a snow ball circus for the next twenty minutes while I bash this robo-cycle thing into my head repeatedly and then we'll reconnoiter and clean up this giant mess.

And that's exactly what we did. I managed to turn the Transformer into something that resembles a motorcycle while my kids laughed hysterically pulling pieces of Styrofoam out of my daughter's hair and netherlands. It was a scene. And after, we swept like mad and my kids ran in every direction screaming "she's going to get us" while I vacuumed. My floor has never been this clean.

Anyway, heed this important advice. Transformers are NOT for five-year-olds. My husband is a 37-year-old mechanical engineer and he can't even put one back together. Do yourself a favor and get your kids some packing peanuts. The environmental kind that turn into compost or whatever. This blog may self-destruct.

Favilla

For the last year my son has been kind of learning how to read. Meaning he won't ever read a word when you ask him. And after a particularly annoying session reading Hop on Pop I decided to stop asking him. In school they taught his some "site" words. So he can read yes and no and his name and my name and a handful of other very important things. Although he claims to not be able to read the sign on my door that says GO AWAY. Just kidding. About the sign. No sign.

For several months he wanted to spell everything. And at first we had to do each letter at a time but soon he could spell whole words after me. And then he'd ask how to spell sentences. Mommy how do you spell, can we go to Starbucks and get a morning bun?

But until now he has not really been interested in reading. In fact his latest interest is in words that rhyme.

Him: Mommy, what rhymes with purple?
Me: Nothing.
Him: It has to have a rhyme.
Me: Murple.
Him: Is murple a word?
Me: No.
Him: So what's the rhyme?
Me: Nothing.
Him: It has to have a rhyme.
Me: Gurple.
Him: Is gurple a word...?

And then this morning, out of the clear blue, while I was sending an email and he was playing with my dad's old ukulele I overheard this:

Ef A Fa
Vee Eye Vi
Fa Vi
El A La
Favilla

And so it goes the first word he ever read was the brand of my dad's old ukulele. Favilla. Owned and operated in New York by the Favilla Family (pictured above) from 1890 to 1986.

Back to Better

Today I'm back to my life. I found out yesterday that I can leave my daughter at school until 1:00 instead of picking her up at 11:30 (which is what I did yesterday). They had said the specialty class thingy wouldn't start til next week so I just figured that meant I needed to pick her up early. Not true. She could still stay and eat lunch and play until 1:00. None of this means anything to you but yesterday sucked having to get her and get home and eat lunch and go back to get her brother and then fall asleep in the car and cry and want to push the elevator button and I'm like is this really my life?

No. That is not my life. My life goes like this: I bring two delightfully cheery kids to the Jewish Community Center and no one cries and everyone hugs their teachers (whom they've known for two days) and I leave via the coffee cart that's free this first week and get myself a latte. I drive home stress free enjoying my latte, get into my studio and do my WORK. For FOUR UNINTERRUPTED HOURS. That's a lot of CAPS. And soon I will pick them up in time for my daughter's nap and my son and I will print out the orders that have piled up over vacation since that's his favorite activity.

And today I realized something very interesting that I will share with you. My son apparently needs a change of venue to have a change of attitude. Like many of us. He had been at his old school for THREE years and almost everyday he was clingy to one degree or another. He loved his school and his teachers. But he developed this habit of behaving a certain way at drop off that he just couldn't shake no matter how comfortable he was or how excited he was to see his friend and teachers. Habits are tough that way. I suspected something was up when we came back from Santa Fe and he turned back into his usual self after an amazing week as a confident, helpful and happy little boy but my theory has been confirmed by his recent behavior at school. He's thrilled to be there. Doesn't know a soul and doesn't care. It's so refreshing.

And that makes me think we have to move so that we can break him of all of the habits he's developed over the last five years. And he may also needs new parents to fully execute on this social experiment. Just a thought. But maybe just a new house would do the trick.

My son showing some JCC pride.

The Land of Enchantment

I don't even know where to begin. How can I describe what a fantastic week we spent with my husband's family in Santa Fe, indeed the land of enchantment. And as beautiful as it was there (breathtaking really. If my husband could find a job there we'd move tomorrow) and as wonderful as it was to spend time with our family (yes, I actually adore my in-laws. All of them. Lucky me, I know) and as relaxing as it was to have lots of extra coverage when it came to watching the kids, what with aunts and uncles and grandparents o'plenty, my favorite part of the trip was my son. From the minute we left our house last Saturday morning he was transformed. He put away all of his anxiety and his quirkiness and his obsessions but for one or two instances (when he got his sandals wet on one hike and then cried about it until we got home and when we went out for dinner and instead of enjoying coloring his place mat he only wanted to hoard crayons) he was completely charming and wonderful. In other words he was only the positive manifestations of all of his personality traits. He was enchanted.

And he wasn't exactly hanging out in his comfort zone. He did spend plenty of time just playing at my brother-in-law's house but we also went hiking and soaked in hot springs and went bike riding and swimming and horseback riding. My son learned how to jump on the porch swing simply by TRYING a hundred times til he got it. Imagine that. And he rode a horse for the first time. And he hiked all over the place and played beautifully with my fantastic niece and nephew. He just blossomed in every possible way. We even went out for dinner one night while my husband's parents babysat the kids. And no one cried or whined or even gave a rat's ass we were gone. They were so happy just playing together, they barely noticed we'd left.

And the minute we got home the spell was broken. Back to whining and crying. Hopefully it's nothing a full night's sleep can't correct. Because I really enjoyed my Santa Fe son. In any case we have our memories - a few of my favorites:


Horsing around in Taos. I searched high and low for Julia Roberts to give her my card so she could fall in love with my prints, but surprisingly she was not touring the pueblo, having ice-cream down at the plaza or hanging out naked in the hot springs with the other local we met.



Killing it on the porch swing. Sometimes the 103rd time is the charm.


Small discoveries.

Don't it make my brown pants blue

The blogworthy item in this picture is not that my four year old son learned to ride a two-wheeler today. That was indeed amazing and we are incredibly proud of him and proud of ourselves for letting him do it at his own pace. But I'm talking about something a little more profound.

Look a little closer and you will see what would appear to the untrained eye as a simple pair of blue jeans. This is no ordinary pair of blue jeans my friends. These jeans, while sitting folded in my son's closet for the last year, have come to symbolize unparalleled inflexibility. But now they symbolize the winds of change. My son, who for a YEAR would only wear black jeans to school and brown pants on the weekends, who would only wear his black shoes with his blue socks, who would only wear his dinosaur undies but never the plain green ones that came in the three-pack, is now wearing sandals, no socks, green undies and yes, as this picture is my proof, BLUE JEANS.

His two-wheel mastery is obviously outstanding but let's just say he had me at blue jeans.

Respiracy Theory

I have a theory.
Follow me for a minute.
I was listening to NPR, which is where most of my theories begin including the one about how Rene Montagne, Michele Norris and Carol Wertheimer are all the same person. But I digress...

They were talking about sleep apnea in kids and how one persnickety kid didn't know he had it until he was twelve and then they took out his enlarged adenoids and his personality changed entirely. Maybe because it was the first time he'd slept a full eight hours ever. They said his only symptom was snoring and waking up tired.

Well my daughter doesn't wake up grouchy, not in the morning anyway, but she does wake up often at night. Not fully, but enough to either mumble or get out of bed or catch her breath and make a snarfle. Last night she came into our bed (big shock) and proceeded to swing at me half the night. And she snores. Loudly. She's basically had a cold since she was born, but even on the rare occasion when she doesn't have a runny nose, she still snores. She's like an 82 year old man. AND she doesn't talk. I know she can hear but I don't know how well she can hear. She says words but her pronunciation is crazy. I'd say she has about 25 words which is probably normal, but my theory is that she has enlarged adenoids and tonsils and all of it has to go. Then she'll be able to sleep and hear and she'll stop snoring and start talking and then we'll really be in trouble.

I should have been a doctor. Except that when I had a mole removed on my belly recently and had to change the band-aid, I almost passed out.

I'll stick to writing.

More than a toaster

How can it be that a toy toaster costs as much as a regular toaster? I mean, you search for toaster in the toy section on Amazon and you get a whole mess of toasters ranging from about $10 to (this is not a typo) $130. And then in a row of images underneath the toys are the real toasters that cost the same amount and, get this, they actually make the toast.

But you know what they don't make? Time. Whoever is pricing the toy toasters clearly understands the underlying value of a toy that will occupy two kids in 30+ minutes of cordial pretend play.

I recently bought my kids a little wooden kitchen off eBay and then pimped it out with all kinds of wooden food and a blender and a cash register and whatever else I could find on the cheap. My goal was to create a little kiddie vortex in this oddly placed corner of our hallway and it appears to have worked. The two of them are in there making cupcakes and soup and whatever else they can think of for HOURS. Literally hours. And these are little people with little attention spans. This affords me the time I need to breathe for a second after work and prepare dinner which makes me endlessly happy. And this is a day after day phenomenon.

Which brings me back to the inherent value of the play toaster which is endless happiness for me and my kids. Don't get me wrong, my kids would happily play with a real toaster. And I definitely like toast. But not as much as I like endless happiness. And that is why I am willing to pay regular price for a toaster that doesn't make toast. Because my kids can play together and no one gets electrocuted. That's worth $25 in my mind.

Birthday surprise

We celebrated my son's birthday last Sunday at a local park. For the weeks leading up to it I was going back and forth about how to plan this thing. I'm just not a good party planner. My birthdays always suck. Although I did plan a kickass New Year's party at my brother-in-law's house in Israel. We partied like it was 1999. In fact it was 1999. Uch, I'm old.

My husband and I decided we'd just do something simple at the park and invite a few of his friends from school and a few family friends. Then my husband spoke to our friends who were having their daughter's fourth birthday party the day before in Berkeley. And they were having everyone from her preschool, baking homemade pizza, planning all kinds of games and MAKING a pinata. George Jesus. How I am going to compete with all that. People. Take it down a notch. You're making the average mothers look really bad here.

So then my head started to spin a bit. Not unlike a bashed-in, homemade pinata. What the hell can we do to spruce up this party? I wasn't super excited about the thought of leading a bunch of four year olds in games. And yet we had reached the point where we couldn't just invite folks to play at a park and call it a party. The kids needed some structure. But I never thought of my son as a kid who likes to participate in games. Since he never does.

So I came up with one game - the going to work race. My son's favorite activity when he gets home from school is to put on my shoes, get his purse with his keys and go to work. He works in San Francisco he recently told me. I figured I'd bring twelve pairs of shoes and twelve purses or bags and line them and make the kids walk across the lawn "going to work". I also ordered a cake from my brother's neighbor in the shape of a Motorola flip phone with happy birthday written in the screen. Then I decided I'd pimp out my husband and make him do gymnastics tricks for the kids and maybe teach them a few tumbles. The only wild card was my son. Who knew if he'd participate at all. Or if he'd want any attention on him. He had the power to completely sabotage any and all plans. So we stuck with our two random party games and hoped for the best.

The day finally arrived and I channeled the spirit of Barney. As my son's friends started to arrive he greeted each one with a sprint in their direction and a bear hug. Who is this child? Pleasantly surprised would be an understatement. Once there was a critical mass I called all of the kids to do follow the leader and I marched them around the lawn doing overhead claps and giant steps and shark claps and monkey jumps. Then my brilliant mom came up with the hokey pokey. My son actually knew the words and sang the whole thing. Then we did the "work" race which was a hit. And after we went to a little hill and my husband showed the kids how to tumble down. Then he walked on his hands and did some cartwheels. The guest were sufficiently impressed. That completed the entertainment portion of the party and then it was time for lunch. So we sat around on blankets and ate pizza. Then we put Shalev in a little chair and sang happy birthday to him and lifted him four times and one for good luck as is the Israeli tradition. Then he saw his cake and just about died. MOTOROLA CAKE! I know, we're weird.

All in all I have to say it was a surprisingly great birthday. No tantrums. No whining. And no one threw up. The three criteria by which every party should be measured. I give it a ten.

Woofing and Hoofing

Is it weird that the only word my 15 month old daughter says consistently is woof-woof? She was born the ear of the Dog... You hear about these kids who don't talk until they're like three and then one day they come out with, "mom, can you please pass me the ketchup." Right? But I don't know. I feel like she can't hear and that's messing up her speech. I mean she claps when we sing and she turns around maybe 70% of the time when we call her name. Although I usually call her name in such a high pitch (where does that come from? I'm so not a high pitch kind of mom) that she's probably just responding to the ringing. Along with the rest of the dogs in the neighborhood. Woof-woof.

Come to think of it, she's still on all fours. Maybe she really IS a dog. I mean she likes to be "walked" (read: hold onto to Aba's hands and walk around the house) and she's even started bending her knees a little. But come on Frankenstein, pick up the pace, eh? Although if she did walk she'd be just about the shortest bipedal on the planet, bless her heart.

The Stove Pipe

One of my son's favorite books is a story, based on the three little pigs, called The Three Little Javelinas. It's a terrific book. I would know since I've read it about 900 times. My husband's brother and his family live on a Navajo reservation in northeastern Arizona and bought this for my son since it kind of has a southwestern/multicultural twist. Plus the illustrations are awesome. Anyway he loves this book.

Toward the end, the coyote (not the big bad wolf in this telling) can't blow down the adobe house that the sister javelina built (as a third child and only girl I closely identify with her ingenuity and forward thinking) so he climbs up on the roof, makes himself really skinny and tries to slide down the stove pipe. And so beings my cognitive journey into the mind of a three year old...

On this particular page of the book, the coyote is standing on one foot in a prowl posture with a big sinister and toothy grin. I noticed that every time we would read this book my son would roll onto his stomach and look away. Then one day my son ask to wear his "skinny" red shirt.

Me: What?
Him: With the skinny!
Me: With the what?
Him (pulling down the shirt): With the skinny alligator.

He shows me his red shirt with an alligator on it and the alligator is showing all of his teeth so my son says Mommy, he's doing the skinny! with kind of a nervous, yet enthusiastic giggle. And now I get it. Sort of.

For weeks he continued to ask for this book but then roll away when the skinny coyote page appeared. Then he started asking me to turn the page back so he didn't have to see the "skinny". Okay. Then we went on a hike near our house and he saw a water drainage pipe and he pointed and shouted It's the stove pipe! And then he showed all his teeth and said he was the skinny which sent him into hysterics.

And since then every time we pass by something that's tall and cylindrical or even just cylindrical, he points out the stove pipe. In the airport on the way to Israel we saw about 57 stove pipes - lots of exposed architecture in airports. Yes, sweety, there's another stove pipe. Imagine that.

Then it gets even more interesting. We get to my in laws and there's a picture of his aunt Jenny (my mother-in-law's sister) in the office and she's got this big toothy grin and my son asked if we could turn the picture around because aunt Jenny was acting like a skinny coyote. What I wouldn't give to spend some time in his little brain...

But our journey came to a climax later that week when something blew up at the potash factory where my father-in-law used to be a project manager. They asked him to come down and figure out what to do so he went with my husband and my son for some generational male bonding time. This place is literally a gazillion stove pipes all welded together. I only heard the story second hand but apparently my son was in total shock when he went in there and saw these giant furnaces and pipes and lord knows what else is in that factory.

Me: Where did you go?
Him: To Saba's work.
Me: Where does Saba work?
Him: In a stove pipe!
Me: You went to Saba's factory?
Him: No, his stove pipe where he burns the skinny coyote.

So I give a big smile and he says, you're being skinny mommy. And I say, thank you. Who doesn't like to be called skinny? Even if, in his world, it means sly and toothy.

Keeping up with Dr. Jones

Today I brought my son for the first time to see the dentist. He turned 3 on Saturday and I figured it was time. We brush his teeth twice a day but who knows if we're actually making a difference with those little toddler toothbrushes that completely splay at even the slightest bit of pressure. That, combined with the fact that our son basically chews on the thing and sucks off all of the toothpaste when it's his turn to brush, makes me question if we're making a lick of difference in his overall dental hygiene.

But it turns out that the brushing (and the related tantrums) were not for naught. No cavaties and kudos from Dr. Jones for a fine set of choppers. Thank god. The last thing I needed was the guilt of having not adequately brushed. Just getting him to brush in the first place was a struggle. I consulted the Berkeley Parents Network (they usually show up when I do a search, though the advice tends to be a little too earth mother for me) and everyone talked about making it a good experience and using dolls and singing songs yadda yadda yadda. An excerpt:

"Try the Raffi song, Brush Your Teeth, and have her brush as you sing along with Raffi. My 14-month old daughter loves it. We start singing, ''When you wake up in the morning, it's quarter to 1, you want to have a little fun, you brush your teeth,ch-ch-ch- chchchcchc...'' and my little daughter grins and looks for her toothbrush. She'll even ask to brush her teeth at random times of the day by putting her finger to her mouth and going ''ch-ch- ch-ch...''. Not sure if this will work with your baby if they already hate toothbrushing but it's worth a try. G'luck. Mom of 14-month old who loves to brush"

Spare me, "Mom of 14-month old who loves to brush". My kid sees right through your little schtick. They were all like that. Use puppets. Sing a song about teeth. Let him do it himself until he's comfortable. Read books about brushing teeth. We tried everything and it always ended in a lot of screaming and very little brushing. Then I saw this one. This guy had a kid like mine. His post was anonymous, fearing the wrath of social services and the crazed Berkeley parents still nursing their four year olds.

"This is how you can brush the teeth of a non-cooperating toddler: Wet the brush and stick it and the tube of paste into your shirt pocket. (You're going to need both hands for a few seconds.) Lay the toddler on the floor (preferably carpeted). Sit on the floor above their head, placing your knees over the toddlers shoulders/ upper arms. Your feet should be along side the child's body. This effectively pins their arms and prevents them from undesired interference. Now imobilize their head between your thighs by gently squeezing. Now you have both hands free to load the paste onto the brush, and one hand available to open lips (which will be sqeezed tightly closed by the child). I found it effective to slide my finger into the corner of the mouth and follow that with the brush. Brush as gently as possible considering the lip resistance. Let them up to rinse.

During all of this maintain a calm manner and in a gentle voice let them know over and over that brushing is not optional- tomorrow we can do it the easy way, or the hard way - the choice is theirs.
-from a dad wishing to remain relatively annonymous"

Now THAT'S the way to do it. It's the pin and pry method. It worked for us. None of this good ship lollipop crap. Now my son's a great brusher. And we really only had to pin once or twice.

But back to the dentist. I was feeling all proud of my son for opening his mouth and saying ah and ee and having his teeth polished and proud of me for brushing at least enough to keep his teeth healthy. Then Dr. Jones asks if we floss. Are you KIDDING me? I barely remember to floss my own teeth and now you want me to floss my three-year-olds teeth? I mean there is a limit to the extra layers of complexity that I'm willing to build into my morning and evening rituals. Soon my daughter will have teeth. Will I have to floss hers too? Sure, when she only has two teeth it will just be the one swipe between, but before long she'll have all twenty teeth and then we'll all have to wake up at 6am in order to floss everybody in time to leave the house by 8:30. Just once I wish someone would give me some advice that might save me some time. Oh you shouldn't read to your kid at night. It's bad for them. Think of all the extra time you could put toward flossing if you didn't have to read "Goodnight Moon" 400 times every night.

Mother of Invention

Sorry to all (both) of you dedicated readers. My family went camping last week so I was incommunicado. It was a superb trip replete with volcanic fields, cascading waterfalls, canned food from Trader Joe's, s'mores, hide and seek in the forest, emerald (freaking cold) lakes, and a lot of dirt. Our baby girl had a touch of the croup when we left (she'd caught it from big brother) which made her a snotty, barking, and wretched mound of fevery baby flesh for the first half of the trip. But then it subsided and she was a happy camper too. Or at least she humored us. But it was our capricious son who took camper of the year award. He was a joy. Played hard all day, did his share of trail walking, ate like a champ and slept 11 hour nights inside his big boy sleeping bag in a tent for four days without a peep. Well, one yelp when he fell into the crevasse between the blow up mattress and the tent at 5am and couldn't get out, but that's happened to me and it's indeed frightful. Especially when you're dreaming about being sucked through the drain at the bottom of a pool by a great white shark...but I digress.

And thanks to a moment of maternal genius, he even found the courage to poop in the woods.

I was worried that we would have another lavatory incident that would set us back months when he saw those outhouses. Truthfully they were pretty nice outhouses with real toilet seats, just no flush. But he walked in there and was appalled. He doesn't understand how to only breathe through his mouth. So he refused. He even told me he didn't have to go anymore. But I knew he had to go because when he has to go he gets nervous and starts to pace and dart his eyes around. But there was nothing I could do to get him in the outhouse short of brute force, which I knew would end with me covered in pee pee and a son with an anal complex. So I relented, we packed into the car, and left for our hike.

Quarter mile into it my son starts to get twitchy and kvetchy again. I knew it was time. I told him we would go poo poo in the woods like bears. He just had to squat down and I would hold him. We could growl like bears too if he wanted. He wouldn't do it. By now he was starting to cry and pace. I said he could sit on my lap (what the hell was I thinking?). He said no. But then a few seconds later he asked to sit on my lap. Now there was no turning back. So I found a big fallen log (so metaphoric), sat down with my legs wide apart and scooped him up with my hands clasped under his knees so he was sitting like a swing between my legs. Lo and behold, the kid actually pooped. And none of it on me. It was my greatest hour. And his.

King of the Potty

Well our son is potty trained. And it only took two weeks really. Two weeks and nine months. I made the mistake of listening to a colleague of mine at work who potty trained her three boys using an intensive behavioral modification method. She said it would take a day. Read the book, she said. Buy the pee pee dolly. You'll be diaper free in no time. Not the case.

I made my first attempt last November when my son had just turned two. I was about six months pregnant and thinking it would be really super to only have to diaper one child. So I designated a weekend for potty intervention. I bought "Potty Training in less than a Day" or something like that, and I bought an anatomically correct doll named Paul who came with underwear, a diaper and a mini-potty. I bought all kinds of treats to reinforce positive behavior - brownie bites, popcorn, chocolate raisins. I bought a ton of chocolate milk. I made notes from the book to keep us on track. And my son was a pretty good sport for a while. But the constant asking, "do you have to go to the potty?" "Are your pants dry?" - I started getting a headache. And it was a beautiful day and he was desperate to go to the park. So we did and he peed on the slide. I gave up after he soaked the bed during his nap. I figured I'd try again after the baby was born. Which I did.

By then he was about two and a half and could follow directions better. Plus some of his friends from school had started using the potty. I bought him a new potty, which we called Baby Paul's potty. Whatever. He started peeing in it which was very exciting, but he was terririfed to poop in that thing. I didn't push the issue but I must admit I was getting pretty tired of pulling big poops out of his underwear. His teachers weren't thrilled about it either so I started sending him in pull-ups, those evil diaper substitutes that are twice as expensive and half as absorbent. Then, since he was basically wearing a diaper, he started wetting his pants again.

Anyway, we decided two weeks ago that we would just forget about the diapers and forge ahead with underwear. And it worked. We had a handful of accidents but for the most part the kid is now doing his business in a designated receptacle. Even in public places. I bought a little fold-able plastic potty top that sits on a regular toilet to make the hole smaller (so tiny tushies don't fall in) with elmo and friends on there. He's willing to poop on elmo. Now he's even going by himself and taking down and pulling up his pants. So overall we're thrilled. Except for a few things...

I can't say I'm super happy about having to dump his poop in the toilet after he goes in the potty. First of all, it splashes and then I have to wipe down the toilet. It also stinks like all get out. It's amazing how much the water in a toilet really masks a lot of the smell. And the wiping isn't going that well. I can't get him clean enough. I ask him to bend over so I can be thorough but that feels like a little invasive. And then I have to clean the poop streaks off the potty. Nasty. And not to mention the pee which he insists dumping by himself. This morning he completely missed and poured a quart of piss on the far side of the toilet and all over the seat which I then had to mop up. And that's if it even goes in the potty. If I don't hold his penis down with my finger, he literally sprays straight ahead.

But he's trained. Gone are the days of diapers and Desitin - the last remaining vestiges of his short time as a baby. Another milestone achieved. Another notch on the belt of parenthood. Another reason to adopt a five year old next time around.