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* My husband offered to make me a grape soda float the other day. I thought he wasn’t serious. He claimed he was. I still didn’t believe him. (Experience has taught me not to believe most of what he says, especially when he claims to be telling the truth.) Then he made himself a grape soda float. He made one for Elvis, too. Some of it splashed on my hand and I licked it off. It tasted like vanilla ice cream topped with Children’s Tylenol. WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS??? WHY???
* If you’ve been wondering where I’ve been, wonder no longer. Where I’m going is nowhere, fast.
* I can’t seem to let go of this fantasy I have about everyone I know leaving me the hell alone for a week.
* My three-year-old hasn’t had a proper bowel movement in at least three weeks. That was when I started keeping track. I’m afraid the real figure is something more like six weeks. Time flies, etc. We’ve given her laxatives and suppositories. It’s an ongoing problem, so before you tell me to take her to the doctor, let me assure you that she’s been taken, many times. She even had an x-ray once to inform us that she was indeed chock full o’ crap, just as we suspected, and we ought to give her more laxatives. Her pediatrician said, “I know. I consulted the G/E people, and that’s what they said. Just keep stepping up the laxatives until something gives. [shrugs]“ This is modern science, kids. But what we have here is not merely a failure to poop; it is actually a refusal to poop. It’s a triumph of the will. Don’t worry. I’m all done talking about it. For now.
* Three things that shouldn’t last three hours but often do:
1) Movies
2) Church services
3) Children’s birthday parties
* I’ve already been informed that I need a vacation. I’m just going to step up the laxatives until something gives.
* I have a ton of dirty clothes to wash. (By “ton,” I actually mean more like 700 pounds. Not an actual ton.) I haven’t been able to wash the dirty clothes because I’ve had more pressing laundry issues, like the ton of dirty towels that keep piling up on a seemingly-hourly basis. (In this case “ton” is an actual ton because of the water weight that dirty towels have.) Is it wrong that I should make wet, dirty towels a priority over (relatively) dry, dirty clothes? It will be when the underwear runs out. Which is why I have to go do laundry now. I actually should have been doing it all morning, but I was too busy making breakfast and mixing impotent laxative cocktails.
* Someday I’ll write a real blog again, but I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you.
Have you ever seen that episode of Scrubs where Turk asks Carla what’s bothering her, and she peels back her scalp and there is a gushing forth of all her neurotic thoughts and obsessions? That’s what this blog is going to be like.
I am doubled over with guilt for the following reasons, in no particular order:
1. Last month I called Princess Zurg’s best friend’s stepmother to see if PZ’s best friend could come to PZ’s birthday party and found out that PZ’s best friend broke her leg in a really bad way over Spring Break and was totally bed/couch-ridden for the next couple weeks and still needed to have another surgery and was going to have limited mobility because of the whole crutches thing for however long it takes to recuperate from a broken leg that’s been broken that badly. So that’s why PZ didn’t have a birthday party this year, because if the best friend can’t come, what’s the point? And the reason I didn’t know about PZ’s best friend’s broken leg before this was because PZ’s best friend lives on the other side of town and her family doesn’t have a car, and so we don’t see her very often at all, especially not since PZ has been going to a different school for the last year. I can count on one hand–probably half of one hand–the number of times PZ has seen her best friend over the last year. That is the state of PZ’s social life. That I felt guilty enough about already, and I didn’t think it was possible to feel much guiltier, but I didn’t foresee the broken leg. When I heard about the broken leg, I felt just awful for PZ’s best friend, and I said I would certainly bring PZ over for a visit, soon. In fact, I penciled it into my calendar for that week. But it didn’t actually work out for that week, and I told myself I would have to pencil it in for some other day the following week, but you know what? I never picked up another pencil, and I never took PZ to see her best friend with the broken leg. It’s been a month. I could still take her–I still want to take her, or think I want to take her, or think I mean to take her, but I’m beginning to suspect that maybe I really don’t mean or want to take her and never actually did because if I really did, I would have done it by now, wouldn’t I have? The truth is that a best friend on the other side of town is much like a starving child in Africa to me, only without a convenient little intermediary organization like UNICEF that I can write a check to and thereby assuage my guilt. No, I have to actually block out some time in my schedule to actually visit the best friend on the other side of town myself, but that is too much work, and that is why I’m a terrible human being. Moving on!
2. Lest ye think the best friend with the broken leg is some kind of aberration in my ordinarily-chock-full-o’-thoughtfulness life, I also have an aunt who lives on the other side of Portland, whom I see about once a year. No, once a year is too generous. I see her about once every year and a half, usually when some other member of my family comes through Portland and says, “I should really see B. while I’m here,” and I say, “Oh yeah, that’d be good, I’ll go with you.” My aunt is getting on in years and is now in a nursing home. I don’t know exactly how long she’s been in the home because I didn’t realize she’d gone there until my older sister mentioned it to me one day. I know she’s only been in there sometime since last July because last July I went to see her in her house (not “the home”), but still, I haven’t been to see her in “the home” and don’t even know which home it is because I haven’t called any of my cousins to find out or get an address to send a frakking Christmas card, should I be so humanitarily inclined this year. I’ve lived a half-hour away from her for the last five years, and I just haven’t gone to see her because I haven’t wanted to think about what to do with the children or when would be a good time to go or calling on the phone and having a conversation–it’s all just been too much, darling, too much, because I’m a terrible human being. But wait! There’s more.
3. After the turbulent elementary school years with Princess Zurg, I have been so relieved and happy that Mister Bubby has done well in school and has never been a problem for anyone and always does his homework and has just generally let me send him off to school and not worry about him for six-and-a-half hours, five days a week. Then a few weeks ago I got a call from his best friend’s mother, who wanted to know if I was also concerned about the fact that our sons have learned exactly nothing new in school this year, that they are still doing the same crap they did in first grade, only with slightly different worksheets. That was the first time I ever really stopped to think about it and realized that actually, yes, now that you mention it, Mister Bubby has been complaining that school is boring and he already knows everything they’re teaching him and why can’t he just go to third grade, and yes, they do have an awful lot of worksheets, don’t they? What the hell is up with the worksheets? I don’t remember doing so many worksheets when I was in school. I guess they can’t afford books and slates anymore because they have to buy computers so our children can be competitive in the twenty-first century. And what are they using the computers for? Hell if I know. The last time I was involved in a child’s education, it was primarily for the purpose of figuring out how I could get myself less involved on a daily (sometimes hourly) basis. All I’ve ever really wanted was to send my kid off to school for six-and-a-half hours a day, five days a week, and not have to worry about anything beyond that. I don’t remember my parents being that involved in my education until I was in high school and the math got harder. I’m feeling a lot of resentment over the fact that I’m devoting all of May 29–paying a babysitter for six-and-a-half hours–to volunteering at the school for “Australia Day,” the annual second grade extravaganza. It’s not like I ever volunteer at the school if I can possibly help it, and usually I can help it quite a bit because our neighborhood school is overrun with parents who volunteer for everything. It’s a very competitive game–who will be the lucky soul who gets to chaperone the field trip to the rock museum???–and I’ve been quite content not to play it. They used to make me volunteer to chaperone field trips because PZ was supposedly so volatile that even being attended by her own freaking aide was not enough, no, she had to have parental supervision if they were going to take her off of school property, and so, yes, I was pleased as punch not to be doing that anymore–but now it’s freaking Australia Day and they need all the helping hands they can get and MB wants me there anyway because I never volunteer and possibly he’s afraid the other kids assume that his mom must be some kind of crack mom because she’s never seen on school property during school hours. And that’s how I got roped into being a group leader in the morning and running the flipping didgeridoo in afternoon, whatever the hell any of that means, I haven’t even looked at my job description(s) yet because I’ve been so preoccupied with the fact that I pay all this money in property taxes and my neighbors spend so much of their time helping out in the school, and my son is still doing first-grade worksheets in flipping May and what the hell does he need a flipping didgeridoo for anyway? I’m so angry about it and yet I feel I have no one but myself to blame because I was the one who wanted a worry-free education for my son–rather, an education for my son that was worry-free for me–and this is just what you get for not worrying: fill-in-the-blank worksheets and mother-frakking didgeridoos. Nice work, Mother. I hope you ate a lot of bon bons this year while your son’s brain was atrophying!
4. We were thinking of sending Elvis to summer camp this year. Rather, Sugar Daddy thought it would be a good idea to send Elvis to this summer camp for children with disabilities, and I had no argument against it because hey, who doesn’t need to get rid of Elvis for a couple hours a day during the summer? So we sent away for an application for this camp, and we got the paperwork in the mail a couple weeks ago, and I started to fill it out because I’m pretty good at filling out paperwork. I did all right with the name and address and emergency contacts and doctors and insurance information, and then I got to the section where I had to describe in detail the extent of my child’s disability and his specific challenges, and I thought, “I can’t do this right now, I’m going to do it later,” because after all this time I still have trouble confronting these facts about my son. I have a visceral response to requests for quantification about his disability. I just can’t handle it. I don’t understand why, but I just can’t, and by “can’t,” I really mean I just don’t want to, and I don’t know why, but I just don’t. But I have to, or he’s not going to go to camp, and I will be sorry later, sometime this summer, when he’s driving me crazy and eating all the popsicles and replacing all the batteries in all of the small appliances and can’t find the right screwdriver and wants me to push him 89 times on the swing but he really means 99 times and he gets frustrated and starts yelling, “aaahhhAAAHHHHaaahhhhAAAAHHHHHaaaahhhhAAAHHHHHaaahhhhAAAAHHHHH” with the full force of his diaphragm behind it for the forty-seventh time that day, and I will probably start screaming myself and want to pop him one and possibly I will actually pop him one because I can’t stand it anymore, and I will only have myself to blame because I was too lazy to fill out the paperwork on time so he could go to camp and make me a little bit less crazy. And I wonder how I can love my son so much while simultaneously not wanting him around very much. Maybe I don’t love him as much as I think I do, unless he’s asleep. That’s just not right. Which reminds me, I need to find that frakking paperwork and fill it out, and now I’m afraid I won’t be able to find it.
5. Girlfriend is almost 42 months old and still needs to be toilet-trained. Sugar Daddy did the heavy lifting with toilet training Elvis, although that was mostly because he finally got the idea that I wasn’t going to do it, and so now he deserves a medal and I need to get on the stick and finally toilet-train our non-disabled child, who has absolutely no desire to use the toilet. In point of fact, she has the opposite of desire. I think sometimes that I was born in the wrong era. As much as I enjoy the conveniences of modern life, I often wish that I could have parented back in the day when adults weren’t supposed to care about scarring their children for life, and if they didn’t do what Ma or Pa said, Ma or Pa could just beat them with a stick and voila, instant compliance–and they didn’t grow up to be serial killers or anything, just average, reasonably-productive citizens who also beat their children with sticks. Not that I want to beat my child with a stick–no, I am far too modern and enlightened to have such feelings, but I admit that I am just plain old weary of trying to figure out how to get my children to do stuff without beating them with a stick. How did toileting get to be so complicated? How did human beings evolve to the point where sitting in their own filth is a preferred state? I have seen each of my children reach the stage where they were interested in the toilet, only to immediately recoil upon being offered a toileting opportunity–and not only recoil, but turn and run in the opposite direction, screaming bloody murder, huddling in a corner every time the word “potty” is uttered–leaving me feeling very much like a guy who’s misinterpreted a pretty girl’s attentions and ends up not only offending her with my romantic advances but turning her into a lesbian besides. What on earth have I done?
6. I am seriously considering giving up my housekeepers because it is so depressing to me to walk around my house and realize that I’ve just been engaging in a bi-monthly exercise of shoving stuff in closets and drawers so someone else can come vacuum and mop, and once the vacuuming and mopping is done, all the crap that we own just comes SPROING!ing out of aforementioned closets and drawers and deposits itself all over the floors and countertops, along with the neverending stream of new crap that finds its way into our house on a daily basis. I am just ready to surrender to entropy already. I caught up on the laundry, sort of–the clothes part, I was mostly caught up on, and then I had this backlog of towels I had to wash, so I’ve washed nothing but towels for the last two days, which is not to say I’ve been continuously washing towels for 48 hours, but towels is all I’ve washed, and now I have an unbelievable backlog of actual clothes that need to be washed again because you just can’t go 48 hours without washing clothes, not when you have six people in your family, all of whom wear clothes. What do I do all day long? Seriously, what do I do? You know how OBL can’t go grocery shopping until she’s organized her pantry? I look in my pantry, which is an unqualified disaster, and I just think, “I would sooner never eat again than try to figure out what the hell is in here,” and then I cram another cereal box in there, close the door real quick-like, and jam a chair in front of it so it doesn’t SPROING! open again. I’m like the anti-OBL. It’s not like I do nothing. Obviously, I am filling up my days with something other than blogging and Facebooking because people still have clean clothes and they have food to eat and there is toilet paper in the house, but on the other hand, there’s all this entropy and long-neglected best friends with broken legs and aunts in failing health and summer camp paperwork unfilled-out and three-year-olds in diapers, and I have to tell you, people, it’s not because I don’t have enough hours in the day. It’s probably because my parents didn’t beat me with a stick more when I was little.
Okay, it was good to get that off my chest. I’m not going to visit anyone’s best friend today, but I think I will do the dishes and start on the laundry and pick up the 47,368 pieces of paper that are lying all over my living room floor. I might even sweep the kitchen floor. I should go to the Target, but I don’t remember why. Somebody’s prescription. Also, I’m pretty sure that since I’ve said the word “frak” about 67 times before 10 a.m. today, it probably means that I should pick up some tampons, too. Incidentally, I feel like “frak” is so much more satisfying than saying the actual F-word, it’s got to be more vulgar somehow. In any case, I should probably stop saying it around my kids. I’ll put that on my list of stuff I “mean” or “want” to do. Damn, I’m gonna eat some chocolate cake now.
That’s right, haters, it’s freaking SNOWING in Portland. Well, not today. Yesterday it was snowing. It snowed so much that church was cancelled! Which is to say that it snowed “at all.” Because Oregonians are notorious for shrinking away from the very sight of snow. Lock your doors, bar the windows, for there are flakes falling from the sky, and they are cold and they are sticking to the ground! All one inch of them! Beware, beware!
Which is not to say that I don’t enjoy a little snow now and then. But I am not enjoying this snow day. All the schools are closed, and all my kids are home, and I am not pleased at all with how this day is turning out thusfar. It is not a happy day. I will not comment further on the snow.
I will make some other, random comments.
1) I have decided that it would be worth all kinds of money to me to outsource toilet training for the younger two children. Either my children will be toilet-trained, or I will have the satisfaction of a trained professional admitting to me that my children are IMPOSSIBLE and there is nothing to be done with them.
2) If my children ever are toilet-trained, there is the distinct possibility that I could DIE OF JOY.
3) DIE!
4) OF JOY!
5) There is a “Jesus” Facebook application, where you can send Jesus to your friends and remind them to keep the “Christ” in Christmas. I know because one of my friends sent me Jesus. I accepted Jesus because it seemed wrong not to, but I’m having second thoughts because it seems like every few minutes I get a notification that I have “unlocked more Jesus!” I don’t know how I feel about unlocking more Jesus. What does this mean, from a theological perspective? I’m confused and disoriented, and I suspect that I may be participating in something less than fully tasteful–which wouldn’t be a problem except for Jesus’s involvement. I like to keep my distasteful activities separate from Jesus. My ability to compartmentalize and rationalize my actions is breaking down before my eyes! How do I remove the Jesus application? SAFELY???
6) I am a teensy-little stir crazy for not having left the house since Saturday. It wouldn’t ordinarily be a problem, except that the kids have also not left the house. It is a deadly combination, I fear.
7) Jeremy Northam is so beautiful. So very, very beautiful.
8) I am hungry, but I don’t know what to eat.
9) I have no idea what to give my mother-in-law for Christmas. Neither does my husband, and he’s her son! How am I supposed to figure it out? I think we will end up doing gift cards wrapped in clever envelopes. Or maybe I could unlock her some more Jesus.
10) Does anyone actually celebrate Kwanzaa, or is this a holiday that exists only in theory and in books? Because while my social network isn’t exactly loaded with African-Americans, I have known black people in my time, and none of them did Kwanzaa. I don’t even know any white people who do Kwanzaa out of, like, solidarity. And I live in Oregon, land of white people who would probably enjoy appropriating African-American holidays just to stick it to the Man. So I don’t mean any disrespect here, but I’m sincerely curious. If you celebrate Kwanzaa or know someone who does, please tell me. I WANT TO BELIEVE.
11) There is, seriously, SO MUCH URINE AND FECAL MATTER coming into the house and failing to leave in a timely and efficient manner, I think it is affecting my brain. Which is to say that I am now blaming my brain dysfunction on that, as opposed to premenstrual syndrome or congenital mental illness.
And now I’m off to put on some warm socks. Gentle readers, adieu.
When a mother of young children complains about how hard it is taking care of babies and toddlers, some mother of teenagers will invariably pipe up and say that it doesn’t get any easier as the kids get older. In fact, it gets harder. From what I’ve heard, raising teenagers is the innermost circle of the parenting inferno. You are Judas, Cassius and Brutus, and they are three-headed Satan, gnawing on your noggin(s) for (what seems like) eternity. As the years go by and my kids get older and new and different parenting challenges arise, the more I think that parents of teenagers are people who just haven’t changed enough diapers lately.
Now, believe me, when I think about what my teenage self put my parents through, I shudder–and I was an angel compared to most of the kids I knew. When I reflect on what a narcissistic, moody, immature whiner I was, I marvel that my parents didn’t slap me silly every day of my life. I’m convinced that the main thing I had going for me during those years was the fact that I was finally toilet-trained. And as far as I’m concerned, when my own kids are teenagers, I don’t care what they do–back-talking, skipping school, breaking curfew, vandalism, piercing stuff, hanging out in back of the 7-Eleven and smoking the cigarettes they rolled themselves–so long as they’re not still pooping in their pants, I’m good. Heck, they can even get pregnant and expect me to take care of their babies while they take classes at the community college because babies are supposed to poop their pants. As long as they are doing their business in the toilet like people over the age of five are supposed to do, they will be keeping up their end of the bargain.
Those of you who have teenagers are probably shaking your heads at the computer screen and muttering, “This girl has no idea what she’s saying. If only it was as easy as changing a diaper. I’d change a thousand diapers every day if it meant that I didn’t have to stay up nights wondering if little Susie is dead in a ditch somewhere. Mark my words, in about five years or so, she’ll be begging to change diapers again.”
Well, mark my words, know-it-alls, in five years I will probably STILL be changing diapers, and I’ll be begging for someone to leave ME in a ditch somewhere. Methinks you have not spent a good 35 minutes scraping fecal matter out of a seven-year-old’s 28 pairs of underpants lately, so maybe you can go soak your heads. Yeah, I’m surly, like your teenager, and if one more person tells me that I should be grateful for the opportunity to change two sets of diapers and launder a third set of underpants being used as diapers, I’m going to pierce my eyebrow and run up their cell phone bill–yeah, their cell phone bill: with text messages like “BYT ME.”
Princess Zurg, God bless her, has always been a handful, and her problems get more complicated and worrisome as she gets older. But I have never–NEVER, a thousand times NEVER–waxed nostalgic for the days when she was taking dumps in her pants instead of physically assaulting people. Is parenting her easier now than it was then? No, I guess not. I guess it’s harder. But I haven’t had to think about Princess Zurg’s bodily waste for about six years now, and you know what? That’s awesome. That’s what saves her life some days, let me tell you. I have NEVER stopped being grateful for PZ’s ability and willingness to use the toilet for its intended purpose. It took her four-and-a-half years to master the skill, but as of now she’s my toileting prodigy and you bet your sweet bippy I’m proud of her. I might just go out and get her a freaking medal today. That’s the kind of mood I’m in.
It might be different if my kids pooped once or twice a day. I think I could handle that…psychologically. It’s this all day, every day, pooping-every-time-I-turn-my-back business that makes it so…heart-breaking. Did I say “heart-breaking”? I meant “soul-crushing.” Some of you might be thinking now that my children must have medical issues, and I should talk to their pediatricians. DO NOT MAKE ME LAUGH. I’ve been to the doctor. I’ve been to doctors. No one cares about my problems. All the doctors I know are parents of people with normally-functioning digestive systems–or of teenagers who don’t talk to their folks about digestion anymore. Parents of people not under an illusion that there’s something charming about a life steeped in doo-doo.
These are the same people who told me not to push toileting on kids who were resistant. That it had to be their decision. That’s what all the toileting experts say, and it seems intuitive–you can’t control another person’s sphincters, can you? Well, can you? These good people would make it all seem so simple. Just have your child sit on the potty for a set amount of time every day. At certain times of the day. Once an hour, every twenty minutes, whatever. Have them sit on the potty, but never force them to sit on the potty against their will. I confess I do not understand how this is accomplished. How do you “have” a child sit on the potty without “forcing” them to sit on the potty? Why would you need to “have” a child sit on a potty if there weren’t a conflict of wills at issue? What exactly do they mean by “have”? Do they mean “ask”? Do they mean “tell”? And what if the child says, “No”? What if he says, “Hell, no”? Do you put him in time-out? On the potty? Without forcing him? My head is spinning.
I rue the day I bought into the notion that you shouldn’t have power struggles over the potty. If I had the proper restraints, three of my four children would be chained to our three toilets right now. I have had it with protecting their delicate self-esteem(s). I have had it with love and patience. I’m tired of my hands smelling like poop all the time.
Riding home in a squad car at 3 a.m.? Bring it on, people. I’m ready for the next stage of life. I’m ready.
For the last several weeks I’ve been trying to make this social story for Elvis about using the potty. Part of the trouble has been images. Photographs are more concrete than drawings, but there are some things that just shouldn’t be photographed. So when it came time to do the pages about sitting down on the toilet vs. standing up, I thought I would have to settle for drawings.
My own artistic skills are somewhat limited, though I’m not too proud to put my lack of talent on display for the sake of my children’s education. However, the best–or least offensive–drawings I could make of sitting on a toilet involved rudimentary stick figures, and I wasn’t sure if Elvis would “get” them or not. I preferred to have a better drawing. So I did something that I knew I should not do. You know where this is going, don’t you?
Right now you’re thinking, “No, girl, you did not–you did NOT look for toilet pictures on Google Images!” Look, I said I wasn’t proud. I knew it wouldn’t be pretty, but I was desperate. I tried to play it safe. I tried to find links via autism sites; they were all broken. I used my inferior Googling skills to try to find the sites the original links were supposed to be linking to. I Googled “toilet training” instead of just “toilet.” I did not Google “sitting on the toilet.” Okay? I’m not that stupid. I am only a little bit stupid. Well, even under “toilet training” there were images I did not care to see. Gentle reader, you would not believe what pictures people will post of their own kids online. No, not those kinds of pictures. But still–nothing you want on your Facebook page when you’re trying to get a job, you know what I’m saying?. ::shudder:: Learn from my mistakes. Do not go there.
So after all this suffering, did I even get what I had come for? No. So I thought, very well, I will use my rudimentary stick figures. At least they aren’t DISGUSTING. Well, to me they’re not. I couldn’t really say what Elvis would think. And that’s when I remembered (later than I would have liked, but fortunately not too late) that I own a digital camera and the Fisher Price Loving Family dollhouse–fully furnished!
Here is where you’ll probably want to stop reading. Heck, you probably should have never come here in the first place. If you’re still here, maybe you get what you deserve. But I feel obligated to post the following photographs as a service to any other desperate parents out there who might be Googling “non-disgusting toilet training pictures that won’t get me arrested if the cops ever search my computer.”
I had a little trouble at first with my model. He’s not the easiest to work with.
See, that just doesn’t look comfortable, does it?
Fortunately, his knees bend.
See, that’s more genteel, isn’t it? And an equally discreet image of the Greatest Joy of Manhood (according to my husband):
And because my children have a particular problem with pooping while standing:
Yes, I realize that the doll’s pants are still on in all these pictures. I’M NOT A SICKO, OKAY? That’s the whole rationale behind this exercise.
Anyway, I’m sorry, I just couldn’t stop giggling this afternoon. Because I’ve lost my mind, Gentle Reader. I have lost my freaking mind.
1. She knows when her diaper is soiled and requests to have it changed.
2. She starts imitating adult grooming behavior, e.g. applies deodorant to her stomach.
3. She insists on wearing her brother’s Thomas the Tank Engine underpants, despite the fact that they’re two sizes too big for her.
4. She will not wear just any diaper, but only diapers with Winnie the Pooh on them. And not just any old diaper with Winnie the Pooh on it. It must be the diaper with Winnie the Pooh hanging from a red balloon, with Tigger riding a tire swing on the back. The diaper with Eeyore on it is so last week.
Oh, honey. I just don’t think so.
The other day I was reading in the Oregonian about these sisters who were getting tested for the ovarian cancer gene. Or something like that. I don’t understand how this gene testing stuff works, or what they test you for, and I don’t really care. I have no interest in testing for cancer genes. The kind of genetic counseling that would have been useful for me is testing kids for that Craps-in-His-Pants-and-Couldn’t-Care-Less gene.
Seriously, who wants to sit in his or her own filth for hours on end, no pun intended? Answer: My children. My children do. They hate to have their diapers changed. They just scream and run away from me. I have to hunt them down and sit on them for the privilege of changing their diapers, and yeah, I resent it a little bit. I have one who’s out of diapers who still disdains using the toilet for the waste-elimination job that Really Counts. Why would a person prefer soiling himself to spending a couple minutes on a harmless commode that has never–no, not once–ever swallowed a single human child? Why? Why?
I’ve blocked out a lot of my childhood memories, but I’m pretty sure that if I’d had a thing for pooping in my drawers and acting like it was no big deal, I would have no shortage of family members reminding me of this former quirk every chance they got. And I guess if this had been a trait on my husband’s side, my mother-in-law would have told me by now. Or maybe not, I don’t know. Maybe she’s afraid that if I found out she was withholding such information until it was too late and I’d already reproduced with her son (four times!), I would not forgive her. It’s possible. If I could go back in time five and a half years and tell my past self that the recalcitrant Princess Zurg would be my easiest child to toilet-train, I probably would have socked me in the face and huddled in a closet somewhere, sobbing uncontrollably and maybe tearing out my hair. I’d be in a mental institution now, and my youngest two children would have never been born. So I guess it’s all for the best that my MIL keeps some things to herself and time travel is not yet a reality.
It seems like someone has always got constipation or diarrhea. You would think all I ever fed them around here was white bread and tainted Mexican food. Before you tell me to talk to my pediatrician, let me assure you that the only advice I’ve gotten from multiple pediatricians is, “Wow. Sucks to be you.” Which is not really advice, but that’s still all I got.
My youngest hasn’t had a proper bowel movement in at least a week. I can’t give her the Miralax that her doctor prescribed because the only fluid she’ll drink anymore, since I decided to wean her, is breast milk, and it’s not like I can dump a capful of Miralax down my gullet and have it come out through my breasts in a therapeutic dosage. At least I don’t think I should try that. My children have exceptionally high tolerances for fiber. I could feed them oatmeal laced with wheat germ and flaxseed three times a day, and they would still be irregular. Not that I would dare feed them such a concoction because I never know when they’re going to turn around and get viral dysentery on me. That did not come out right. Never mind!
Topping off the list of Bowel Habits Not Conducive To Toilet-Learning is the fact that they all prefer to do their business standing up. Which is fine when it’s the other business and they’re a boy, but standing is really incompatible with Western-industrialized hygienic defecation models. You know what I’m saying?
Okay, I’m done now. Hope you all weren’t eating lunch or anything.
I suspect my Elvis has been using my toothbrush for the last week or so. He has a perfectly good toothbrush of his own. It has Thomas the Tank Engine on it. It even plays music. (“They’re two, they’re four, they’re six, they’re eight–shunting trucks and hauling freight.”) But apparently Thomas the Tank Engine has nothing on a pink brush with full-size bristles. Not as far as my boy is concerned.
In related news, I’ve noticed that my baby does not like to eat cereal. She only likes to eat my cereal while she’s sitting on my lap. In point of fact, she does not like for me to enjoy my cereal by myself. It must be a shared experience.
What is the point of this commentary? Well, we all three have this cold/cough thing that we can’t seem to shake. I wonder what that’s all about.
Speaking of Elvis and the shared experience, his occupational and speech therapists are working on a social story for him about using the potty. It’s pretty simple: “I can use the potty. I like to use the potty at Safeway. I can use the potty at home, too. Mom and Dad are happy when I use the potty.” No heavy indoctrination. Just good old-fashioned emotional blackmail in a clinical setting. Anyway, to make the story more concrete for him, they’ve asked me to take some pictures of our bathrooms, the toilets, the house, etc. They also said it would be nice if I got a picture of the Safeway potty. At first I chuckled and thought, heck, why not, I have no pride. But now I’m thinking…no. Not really a place I want to go, taking cameras into supermarkets to get images of the bathrooms. Like, here’s the line and you just crossed it. No. I think we’ll have to keep the Safeway potty “more abstract” for the time being.
It would appear that we will soon be enrolling our oldest daughter in the School for Incorrigible Girls. Actually, it’s more of a School for Incorrigible Kids, as there are probably more boys there than the other, but School for Incorrigible Girls sounds better. More Roald Dahlish. Also, maybe like the name of a USA Up All Night Movie. But we won’t go there.Anyway, yes, we have an appointment this afternoon to meet with the relevant mucky-mucks of this “clinical program in an educational setting,” or however it’s referred to, and check out their facility. Stroll around the grounds until we feel at home, as it were. I’m going in with an open mind. That’s all I can say. If you don’t hear from me again, it’s because the men in white coats took my open mind and ran with it. (Look, I’m the one putting my kid in a funny farm. I think you can afford me a little levity.)I’ve been thinking lately about when Princess Zurg was first diagnosed, how her preschool teacher had said of course PZ could be mainstreamed, no problem; how the autism specialist who did her evaluation said PZ was going to be just fine because she had good skills and good parents. I’m not bitter or anything. I’m just feeling the irony. Irony isn’t a bad thing. Sometimes you just have to sit back and appreciate it.
I want to say, in all seriousness, thank you for all of your support and concern vis a vis the Princess Zurg Issue. I don’t mean to jerk you around with dead skunk posts. Gentle readers, you are my friends. Your patience and good karma mean a lot to me.
As long as I’m talking about folks who are related to me, I want to tell you that my sister–my actual sister, whom I know in real life–is blogging on WordPress, and you should go visit her. If you like my blog, you will probably enjoy hers. Not as much as you like mine, of course, because that would hurt my feelings–but you can just keep those inconvenient details to yourself, should they arise.
I’ve decided that 2008 is going to be the Year of the Potty. Elvis is going to be five in April, and I would like him to be using the toilet before then. Dare I dream? I do. What’s more, I think where Elvis goes, Girlfriend will follow. She’s only two, and that would make her a prodigy in our family–heck, in our family you’re a prodigy if you’re trained before age four–but she idolizes her big brother, and if he uses the potty, what options does she really have? (Don’t answer that.)
The trick is making him think it’s his idea. Historically I have not been good at tricking my children. They’re pretty smart. That’s the challenge of parenting, being smarter than the children. I can’t win on stubborn, so I have to use my wits. Think, Madhousewife. Think think think.
Nothing’s coming.
We own a potty-training video–I Can Go Potty!–which my children have always enjoyed, but nevertheless have not found inspiring. I’ve been thinking of replacing it with a video or book starring a beloved children’s show character–if I could only find one starring a character that my children are familiar with. People rave about Bear in the Big Blue House’s (or is it Big Blue Bear in the House?) potty video, but my kids wouldn’t know that bear from Adam. Does it make a difference? Is Bear in the Big Blue House charismatic enough that my children could fall in love with him (and by extension, the toilet) at first sight? Various Sesame Street characters have starred in potty-training books. My kids know some of the Sesame Street characters, but I wouldn’t bet on them finding Ernie or Elmo compelling in that particular role.
Actually, the characters that the youngest two are most endeared to are Barney and Thomas the Tank Engine. I heard that Barney had a potty video, but I haven’t been able to locate it on the interwebs. (I have found YouTube videos of “Barney taking a dump.” I don’t know if that would be as effective or not…but there are still some places I’m not ready to go.) I’m thinking that Thomas the Tank Engine and his engine friends do not use the potty. You know, what with them being trains and all. Sir Topham Hatt is theoretically capable of using the potty, but such behavior seems somewhat out of character for him. And there are no Thomas the Tank Engine potty videos, so I need to just get off this track. Ha ha, get it? Track? Never mind.
There is a Thomas the Tank Engine potty seat on Amazon.com, but it’s the First Years brand, and I’ve owned two First Years potty seats and really don’t care for them. (I think we lost both in the fire.) And I’d rather not pay $23.99 for something I don’t care for, especially since it’s just a Thomas sticker on the back of a regular First Years potty chair. If it were a potty shaped like a train, that would be different. Which makes me wonder, why hasn’t anyone made a potty shaped like a train? They could pee in the boiler and poop in the tender. It is really just wrong for me to talk about this. Do you know that in the house I grew up in, nobody even used words like “pee” and “poop”? I have no recollection of how we referred to those activities. We all learned to use the toilet, so we must have talked about it at some point, but my mother had a strong gag reflex, and it just wasn’t kosher to discuss bodily functions in many venues. Certainly not at the dinner table, which is where my husband and children like to discuss bodily functions. My children are very, very fond of talking about toilets and toilet activities. They think it’s hysterical. I keep telling them they should be doers of the word and not hearers only, but they don’t like when I push my religion on them.
So I was looking online for other, non-First Years potty chairs, and it’s a somewhat daunting task. There are approximately 400 to choose from–including this “fancy potty chair” by Little Colorado. It’s made of resilient Baltic Birch and has armrests and a built-in bookrack and toilet paper holder. It can be mine for $70.99, plus $9.99 shipping and handling. I think my first couch cost less than that.
There’s also a musical potty chair (Ababy, $64.95), a hand-painted “western” potty chair (Ababy, $68.95), and a toddler urinal (Visionaire, $39.19). The urinal is a nice concept, but I have to tell you, it does not look stable to me. I value stability in something that is supposed to collect my child’s urine. That’s all I’m saying. Evenflo makes this so-called “magic potty” ($41.88). I’m not sure how to describe it. It looks like it’s supposed to be some space-themed…”hover”-potty. I dunno. That doesn’t look so stable, either. And when someone uses the word “magic” and “potty” in the same breath, I expect to be paying more than $41.88, or probably I am getting ripped off.
On the more economical side of things, there’s the PRIMO Bunny potty ($9.99). It’s a bright yellow bunny that looks kind of like a riding toy (handlebars yes, wheels no), and the bunny is sticking out his bright red tongue. Huh. I don’t get it. If I wanted to be (extra-)narcissistic in a really weird way, I could go with the “Buddy Giraffe” toilet decoration (Jeckida Inc., $13.99), but just looking at it makes me a little upset.
Then there’s the Teamson “lighthouse” potty ($59.95). What, for my great-aunt who collects them? I wasn’t aware that lighthouses were a great motivator for the under-three set.
Which brings up another point. Technically, Elvis’s nearly-five-year-old bum is big enough to use the actual potty–and really too big to use most potty chairs, which seem to be designed for infants under twelve months. Go figure. (Did the potty-chair industry not get the memo on childhood obesity? They really need to step it up!) But big kids can be afraid of the big potty, too. So where’s my school-age Thomas the Tank Engine potty chair shaped like a train? Must I really do everything myself?
In other news, Elvis has lately grown very fond of fire hydrants. We have a lot of fire hydrants in our city. I know, because every time we pass one, he says, “Hydrant! It’s yellow!” There’s a potty-chair idea here that I’m not fully comfortable exploring at this time, but perhaps at a later date. Elvis has also taken to dressing up in his father’s clothes–which is better than him dressing in my clothes, I guess. If only he would strive to emulate his father in other areas. Toilet use, for example. His father loves using the toilet. Why did none of those genes pass along? I’m just wondering.
On that note, I think I will go make lunch.
When I was in college, I went to church with a woman who was a published author. (Two books!) She had seven children, ranging in age from pre-school to high school. Orson Scott Card published her first book, and in the introduction he remembers asking her how she found time to write with seven kids. "I don't," she said. "I neglect my children."
Back then, I thought she was kidding. Now that I have children of my own and no writing career to speak of, I realize that she was telling the truth. It only sounded funny.
Today Elvis was supposed to start using the toilet. Yes, I decided that. After all these years, I still think I have some control over the event. Well. I think I've finally disabused myself of that notion, at least temporarily. I'm fresh out of Nemo underpants and patience, and I've decided that perhaps it is Sugar Daddy's turn to toilet-teach a child. When he'll find time to do that, I don't know. (Maybe between business trips to Paris–ooh la la!) But I am done, for today and maybe for ever, because how can I clean carpets when I have so much else to do, and more still that I'd rather be doing? How can I give Elvis the attention he needs to successfully master his sphincters when what I really want is to neglect him and finish the manuscript(s) I started two and three years ago and keep abandoning because my family needs me more? Stupid family.
I almost finished something last month. I came so very, very close. I may yet finish it. Perhaps even this very year. I have a whole seven and a half months left of it, you know. Perhaps Elvis will be toilet-trained before the age of four as well. He will be setting a Madhousehold record, in that case. Oh, it's only April and I'm still so full of optimism. It's the magic of spring, I tell you, the magic of spring.
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