Please Don't Hate Me!

It looks like this girl is going to potty train herself.

 Over the past few weeks I have found her several times like this, fully clothed, trying to go potty. When I finally relented and let her take off her clothes and once or twice she has actually peed! Still, I have told her, "I'm not potty training you until you can speak."

Little Meggie (20 months) has few words, but boy, does she know what's going on! She does not enjoy being left out of anything her older sibs are doing, and this is no exception.

This morning, after I got her dressed and put her piggies in, she had a melt down because I wouldn't open the door to my bathroom. I finally did so, and she climbed right up on the potty. I thought to myself, "There is no way I am going to take off her clothes. We just got dressed. She's just playing potty." Alas, she accidentally slipped backwards into the water, soaking her outfit. I stripped her down and sat her back on the toilet and went to get her some clean clothes. Guess what? She tinkled.

"I do not have time for this today," I thought. My tried-and-true method of potty training requires 3 days of going practically nowhere and doing practically nothing but taking a child to the bathroom and washing panties. And I can not clear my schedule this week (and perhaps not for months) to do this. But, given her willingness, I figured I'd be crazy to stifle it. I remembered that we had some princess pull-ups. I have a hard and fast rule of no pull-ups during potty training, but I do use them for bed wetters, and had some left over from Bronwen's bed wetting days. I have learned, however, with five kids, that hard-and-fast rules are made to be broken, so today Meggie is wearing princess pull-ups. Whenever I remember (which has been about every two hours) I take her in to go to the bathroom. She has kept them dry and gone ever time we tried to go. I can't believe it.

In other getting-too-big-for-her-mommmy's-liking news, Margaret also learned to crawl out of her crib this weekend. That, my friends, is always a very dark day. :)

Little Meg is bound and determined to grow up as soon as possible; alas, I am willing her to stay my baby forever. And I know which of us will win this particular struggle. Sigh.

Whose Genes Are These, Anyway?

Who's the bigger fool? The fool who puts his head in the toilet, or the fool's mom, who believed that he had learned his lesson and would not repeat the stunt? It's really hard to say, but I am left wondering if our son is not as bright as we gave him credit for being. Does this mean that he is destined to become a dumb jock? Or does it foreshadow years of being bullied by kids like this, who will stick his head in the toilet and flush? Or does he just take after his Uncle Stuart, pictured below, sometime before his second birthday?
Please be sure to observe my oh-so-stylish 1985 pants, socks, and shoes there in the hallway. We should have known then that Stuart would grow up to be a surfer, since he so enjoyed the feel of the tide at his feet. (For those of you unfamiliar with this popular story in my family's lore, he used to climb into the toilet and flush his feet.)
So, perhaps I should not despair. Maybe he will grow up to be good looking and fluent in four languages like his uncle. Perhaps it is a sign that for the sake of science, he will be willing to sacrifice his own comfort in future experiments? I'm not sure what hypothesis he is seeking to prove right now, but I am holding out hope that there is one. However, until he moves on to a new experiment, I'm afraid to let him go to the bathroom alone. Unfortunately, he is only one of many around here who seem to need my attention almost constantly, so chances are good that his hair will experience a few more toilet rinses before this phase phases out!

You Did What????

The brain of a two year old is a beautiful, frightening thing. Two year olds learn through exploration and experimentation. Sometimes they have to learn lessons the hard way (or the gross way, as the case may be.) Take this little vignette from our home Friday evening.
I'll set the stage. Jared is gone for the evening again (I'm a State Fair widow through Labor Day while he mans a booth there in his non-office hours.) I am trying to keep my kids in bed. Somehow, only moments after I kiss them good night and turn out the lights, they have a desperate need to get up and go to the bathroom one more time. Feeling exhausted and ready for them to all be asleep, I nevertheless succumb to Ian's plea from his bedroom, "Moooooom, I think I need to go potty!"
I get him up and see him sit down. He "tinkles", but informs me that there is more to come. I leave the bathroom, feeling that giving him my attention is a reward for being out of bed--that and I am just ready to be by myself for a few minutes. He's probably in there for a good ten minutes being so quiet that I forget that he's not in bed. When I do remember, I jump up and run in. He is sitting on the toilet with his head completely soaked--dripping, in fact.

Me: Ian, why is your hair wet?
Ian: Huh?
Me: Son, why is your hair wet?
Ian: Because it's wet. (This is the way he answers EVERY "why" question, and yet I continue to ask them as if I'm expecting a real answer.)
Me: Ian, HOW DID YOUR HAIR GET WET?
Ian: In the potty.
Me: YOU PUT YOUR HEAD IN THE POTTY?
Ian: uh-huh.
Me: AAAAAAAAAAAAAh!

I immediately strip him down, swat him once on the bottom, and place him in the tub while running his second bath in an hour's time. He is shocked by how quickly I am moving and by how traumatized I clearly am.

Me: (disgusted, and wondering if I will ever be able to kiss his hair again) Ian, the potty water is dirty. That' s just for going potty and throwing up, but we never touch the water. Okay?
Ian: (mollified) Okay, Mommy. Can I take a bath now?

Sometimes, you just have to learn the hard way, I guess.

True Love

I'm in love. The object of my new-found and undying affection is my new dishwasher. In a stroke of good fortune (actually a blessing I attribute to our policy to pay a full tithe,) we found out that a friend of ours was selling their slightly used, high-end, so-much-better-than-our-1980-model-that-it's-beyond-comparison dishwasher for a fraction of the retail price.
The installation, which appeared to be simple and straightforward, did throw us for a loop. It would have helped if the owner's manual had said something more than "Do not attempt to install without a certified Miele technician." I did manage to feed the kids that evening with the water turned off, but when Ian had a major blowout on the living room rug and I attempted to clean him up with only wet wipes, (while keeping the other kids out of the living room until I could clean up the carpet in there,) it became somewhat hysterical. We attempted to turn back on the water in order to shower him and water spewed all over the kitchen, soaking our 1980 vinyl flooring and 1980 oak cabinets. In the end, we did figure out how to get the water back on without the spray--I just had to remember to dump a bucket every 6 minutes while Jared made three trips to Home Depot.
But Good Fortune continued to smile upon us and the entire Elders' Quorum Presidency showed up for a meeting and assisted with the install. They got it to run as long as the garbage disposal was turned on!! We finally unplugged the garbage disposal until Darling Brother-in-law Flint the handyman/electrician/mechanic came over the next morning and put a new outlet plug in so that I didn't have to choose between a dishwasher and a garbage disposal.
We still haven't learned to comply with the owner's manual instructions that we should not rinse the plates, but at least we aren't completely washing dishes before putting them in. And I am in the process of teaching the kids how to load the dishwasher, which is so marvelous.
Stay tuned--I am composing a sonnet to the new fridge that we are expecting any day now!

Rules to live by

Here are a few rules that may make your life simpler and happier if you don't have to learn them the hard way:

1. Never make a batch of chocolate chip cookies thinking that you'll be able to resist munching the dough until it's gone.
2. Never assume that a recently potty-trained 2 year old who just went to the bathroom is "safe" playing quietly alone in your bedroom. He could explode at any moment (and probably will, all over your just cleaned carpet that is exactly 27 years old and needs all the help it can get to look decent until you finally put in the hardwood floor of your dreams.)
3. Never tell your child that he'll have to sit in front of his breakfast until it's finished unless you want to spend the rest of the day stuck at home while he takes one bite every hour. Why oh why do I engage in battles of will with my children when I know them to be stubborn little punks? (this photo was taken at 12:30 pm. He finally finished his breakfast at 2:37 pm, after which he proceeded to get dressed, make his bed, and do his chores as if it were 8:30 am. So, I guess I won the power struggle, but I lost most of the day.)
   
4. Never get involved in a land war in Asia
5. Only slightly less well-known is this: never go in against a Sicilian when is on the line! (for those of you who are confused, time to revisit your copy of The Princess Bride and then take this quiz.)
   

Caught up in the World of Wizardry

It's Harry Potter season. Between the movie coming out two weeks ago and the new book out last weekend, everything's coming up Harry. I ordered my copy of Deathly Hallows to come via Amazon on the day of the release, but I relinquished it to hubby. You see, I generally re-read the entire series with each new release. This time, since I have a pile of books stacking up in my must-read-as-soon-as-possible pile (which is next to my bed and becoming too cumbersome), I have opted to read only book 5 and 6 before savoring the final book to the last crumb. I started listening to book 5 on tape on the way home from Whittier and am now deep into the school year, incensed by Dolores Umbridge and wishing I could tuck in with the students at their feasts. Just once I'd love to be there with the ceiling of stars and the tables drooping with feast food!
So, I'm not going to spend much time on this blog--I want to get back to my book, and a girl only has so much time to read when she has four children, including one who is teething and one who "thinks he needs to go potty" every 15 minutes--have I created a monster?
Here's a site for fun HP games, quizzes, etc.
Now, back to my book!

Are We There Yet?

This morning, my mom and I (what would I do without her?) loaded the kids up in the van, put one last load of laundry in the wash so that everything in the house could be clean, stopped for gas, picked up a prescription, and dropped off some leftovers out of our fridge at Christine's before finally getting on the road to L.A. Back in the days before I had four children, I regularly made the jaunt to L.A. to visit my mom without my husband. (His schedule is far too restrictive for me--it really cramps my style:) I had it down to a science: leave at 9 am, stop once at a rest stop for 15 minutes for potty breaks, etc, then get back on the road and get into Whittier by 3:00, beating the rush hour traffic that hits at 4:00. Most of the time I could pull it off just like that.
Well, now we've had a baby and everything's changed. Just getting out the door on time was unrealistic--at 9:00 I realized that I was going to need to wake up Bronwen and feed her before we left (the dear thing sleeps until 9:00 or 10:00 in the morning--12 hours straight without waking up once!) We had to make much more frequent stops (4 total) because Ian is only on his 5th day in underwear. And of course, Bronwen couldn't go all day without eating and only took cat naps instead of her usual four hour mid day nap. And twice we (meaning Mom) managed to make a wrong turn or miss our exit and it cost us some major time. Naturally, we hit the city of Angels at prime time, so it took much longer to get through the city than we were hoping it would. All in all, we arrived 8 hours and 12 minutes after we got on the freeway this morning. A much longer trip than we had planned.
Every time we got off the freeway, someone would ask if we were at Nana's yet. And everyone was so thrilled when we finally pulled up. Bronwen was so happy to be out of her car seat that she just rolled around on the floor cooing for at least half an hour after we got here. Ian was so happy to be here that he promptly messed his pants after being accident free all day! And Kimball and Henry raced past Allison in the kitchen to get out to Nana's backyard and start exploring. So, it was obviously worth the trip.
The bad news is, I'm going home on Saturday--without my mom as shotgun/backup driver. Which means there is potential for it to take even longer. Do you think that if I think positively the universe will send me a sidekick for the ride? Maybe there's an angel who needs to head north for the weekend! I'll need all the help I can get!

(These pictures were taken last summer on our visit to Nana's.)

Potty Training--Day 3

So, I'm on day three of a three day plan to get Ian potty trained. My mom has always insisted that it only takes three days if you do it right. So, on Thursday, I packed away all the diapers (I am too cheap to throw them away when I'll have another kid there soon enough) and showed Ian that their usual spot was empty. We put on some underwear, and I told him that big boys keep their underwear dry. Then every few minutes I ask him to check it and see if it is still dry. About every 30 minutes we take him in and have him sit for a few minutes. For sitting on the potty, he gets one fruit snack (a rare treat at my house) and if he goes, he gets the entire bag. We had a few s the first day, although he made it through his nap dry and woke up dry the next morning (we did take him once in the middle of the night.) We had fewer s yesterday--one wet and one of the other kind (blech! this potty training is not for the faint of heart or the weak of stomach). Today it really seems to be clicking--his only was #2 and he actually came and told me that he had to go once, which was wonderful.
We even went to the farmer's market today and then to Costco, where he went on demand. Yeah! Those of you without kids have no idea how monumental this is (and I apologize for the scatalogical subject matter.)
Nana brought him this cowboy underwear which he is showing so proudly in the picture and which he is working very hard to keep dry. He also got some new cowboy sheets from Target which he has kept dry at naps and bedtime. I am so proud of him. Hopefully we'll have him totally ready by Monday, when we pack him in the car for a six hour road trip (the ultimate bladder control contest.) I suppose we'll need to stop a couple of times to let him go.
Anyway, if you are trying to potty train your toddler, the best thing you can do is to get rid of those diapers and pull ups so that you don't have a crutch. Just prepare to clean up a few messes in the process. And have your carpets cleaned when you're finished!:)

By the way, I loved the The Order of the Phoenix movie, although it made me want to reread the book because they had to leave out so much. It was fun to see Helena Bonham Carter as Bellatrix LeStrange. She's in one of my favorite movies, "A Room with a View." Anyway, go see it (but not until you've read the book at least once.)