Farewell to the poop bucket

When Tommy was little we had these friends who had stinky neighbors. They were so concerned by the neighbors' foul odor that they labeled their outside garbage bins. (Because when you live in townhouses your garbage can is right next to your neighbors'.) Because they didn't want smelly neighbor people stinking up their garbage.

That's right. Stinking up their garbage.

You know how sometimes you are talking to someone and they mention an annoying habit and you realize that you've never ever ever been bothered by that particular habit? And slowly the realization hits you that you've never been bothered by it probably because you're the botherer? That's what happened.

At first we teased them, because seriously, whose garbage smells good? Then we realized that as the neighbors with babies, we are literally throwing away bags of crap on a weekly basis. And we felt a little bad, but the alternative was keeping the bags of crap in our house and that was way worse than being the neighbors with smelly garbage. So we kept throwing out our bags of crap, which is gross. And smelly.

This continued for 5.27 years.

But as of January 11th, we are no longer the smelly garbage neighbors!

Wait, yes we are. Because we still throw out rotten food and grass clippings and well...garbage. But we no longer put human waste in a bin in the middle of the road for the garbage man to pick up! We have graduated to a new kind of sophistication and the poop bucket has been banished to the garage with all the other useless stinky things we own.

Yay for Little John and his adorably under-ed bum!

John and the Toilet

We've been letting John use the potty for a few months now. He likes it. We like it. We give him stickers when he does it. It's a win win win.

A couple of weeks ago he remembered that diapers are uncomfortable and that he prefers cool dude unders. So he started wearing them at home, and we'd diaper him anytime we left the house (which was often.) 

I laughed the first time he peed his pants. Because he was sitting at the kitchen table shouting "mom! mom! It's peein' or poopin'!" He was totally panicked. I told him to "hold it hold it hold it!" and he did. With his hand. I grabbed him and ran him to the bathroom, stripped him down and tried to get him to finish in the toilet. He let go of himself (making a big mess) and we laughed together. Me laughing at the phrase "hold it" and him laughing at me laughing at the pee. (Because, potty humor.) 

He seems to have caught on relatively easily from there and yesterday he went to Aunt Kate's house rockin' the unders. Then to the library for the Read 1,000 books before Kindergarten launch party. AND in the car ride home. 

He's still in diapers at night, and I still remind him often to go, but he's doing it! I feel both wildly successful and weirdly sad to have zero babies in diapers. Tommy and John overlapped their diaper periods for a year, and it seems odd to have so many big kids around here with no babies to protect. 

Captain Underpants

Once upon a time I was in the 9th Grade at Oak Canyon Jr. High and I was in an honors English class. I drop the honors not only to feed my ego (hello ego! nice to see you all big and overbearing!) but also to paint the picture of academia (ok, fine, I'll just call it nerdiness) that went on in that class. I remember Mrs. Jensen telling us that in a room full of "type A individuals" she expected more than turning in quality papers on time. She fed our egos too. Clearly we were far superior to those in her ordinary classes. 

In case you aren't aware of it, in Jr. High there are groups of people, Jocks, Popular Girls (why there are no popular guys or female jocks I'll never know), Dancers, Stoners, and of course Nerds. I can't tell you for sure about the groups of which I wasn't a part, but within the Nerds there were subsets. Cool Nerds, Goof Off Nerds, Athletic Nerds (not the same as jocks), Pretty Nerds (aka Smart Cheerleaders), Nerd-Nerds (comes with a pocket protector!), Band Nerds, Singing Nerds, etc. 

Of course now that I've grown so mature and adult about things, I realize that these categories serve exactly no purpose at all, but they were alive and well nonetheless. (Nerds Who Use 'Nonetheless' was not at a category). 

Oral book reports were one very important piece of our grade in Mrs. Jensen's class. And though I can't be sure of the reading material requirement, I feel fairly confident that when Mike G. (a goof off nerd) stood up and announced that he'd be presenting his report on the book Captain Underpants, Mrs. Jensen was disappointed. Mike G. had guts. But you know what blew my mind? He actually prepared a real live book report, with a handout, a point and EVERYthing! About a book called Captain Underpants, which seemed to be some kind of comic strip. He gave us laminated bookmarks with the caption "Underneath we all wear underpants" on it. At the time I had no idea that he was impacting the rest of my life. 

So in 9th Grade was formally introduced to Captain Underpants. 

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Fast forward some years. Tommy and John are boys. Both of them. And they think potty humor is the best (and funniest) ever. 

For example:

J: Knock knock

T: Who's there

J: Diiiiiie-pah!

T: Diaper who?

J: DIIIIIIIE-PAH booty bum bum!!!! baaa ha ha ha ha

And they laugh and laugh and laugh. 

Or they did until their mother told them that our bodily functions are not for people to laugh at and that if I heard any more potty jokes I'd feed them vinegar. Now their potty jokes go like this. 

J: Knock knock

T: Who's there

J: Diiiiiie-pah!

T: Diaper who?

J: DIIIIIIIE-PAH booty bum bum!!!!

*crickets and the most serious face*

J: Potty word, no laughing mom. no laughing about potty words. 

So, you see my parenting is very effective. 

But the most important piece of information here is that I have the secret. I know how to make my boys laugh. And if I am ever in a silly mood, we can all have a good laugh over a potty word. 

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Now Fast Forward to John being interested in potty training. It's about dang time, and honestly I think if I stopped buying diapers and wipes Josh would do backflips and sing my praises forever. 

I made John a potty chart and we very casually let him use the toilet anytime he wants. He gets a sticker when he does and everybody's happy. I don't have it in me to do that "2 day potty training" thing, instead I just want him to do it himself. So, we've been encouraging that. Well, he filled up his first potty chart and kept talking about wearing unders and so I put a clipart of captain underpants on his second potty chart. 

The moment I told the boys that this guy was Captain Underpants!!! I became the coolest mom in the West. When I told Tommy that the quietest place on earth (the library) had a book about Captain Underpants he died laughing and immediately demanded that we all go the library AS SOON AS POSSIBLE!!!! So we did, and I let him check out Captain Underpants (2 books!) and we read them. 

Disclaimer: I had never read these books before reading them with my 5 year old. 

I cannot possibly de-recommend these books enough. 

I mean it. Really. They are full of potty humor and horrible pranks. (ketchup packets under the toilet seat) The cool kids in the book make fun of the nerds. They use mean words and teasing and more slapstick violence than I find funny. As far as I can tell these books have no redeemable qualities. 

Except of course that my child now thinks reading is the best thing that has ever happened to him and he wakes up early asking if we can read and stays up late quietly "reading" in his bed. He has always enjoyed reading when we do it together, but he has never wanted so desperately to read something so often. And honestly? Anything that makes my kids love books is good in my world. 

NOTE: Also I think it's fine for a kid in 9th grade to read these books because they've already heard all of these mean words (and if he's a nerd probably been called them and if he's not a nerd he's probably called someone them) and he gets that slapstick whacking is not the same as trying to murder your little brother and he probably thinks it's funny to find the grammatical errors. 

So we read. The whole dang thing. 2 volumes of Captain Underpants. 

Except the pages that had booger jokes, which was a lot of them since the book was called Captain Underpants and the Bionic Booger Boy. And on the page where the "idiot nerd boy", Melvin Sneedly sneezed while his combinotron was merging his boy body with a robot the snot also got put in the mix and Tommy started gagging uncontrollably. He nearly lost his lunch and gagged and gagged and gagged and I said "Should we quit reading this totally gross-o book?" and he covered his mouth, put on his strongest and most determined face and said "No, just cover those yuck-o pictures and I'll plug my ears while you read till we get to that funny captain underpants part again. OK?" So we did. 

And that is the long long tale of that one time I read a stupid book to my 5 year old and now he loves reading and I'm afraid he'll never stop checking out these books and I'll be sorry for the rest of my life that I tried to potty train Little John. Serves me right.

Progress

The thing about potty training is that it isn't really photo-appropriate. At least not according to Josh.

Every time I take a picture of the world's most adorable bum he has a meltdown.

And every time I take a picture of that bum in the world's most adorable underwear he reminds me that "once it's on the internet you'll never get it back"

And the other part of potty training even I wouldn't dare take (or share) a picture of.

So instead you get to hear me tell you all about the mad success over the last 24 hours.

For the last few months Tommy has been happy to pee on the potty because at Grandma's house he learned that it makes a funny sound. So every night he'll go in the potty before his bath. But then it was attached to baths and he won't do it any other time of day. And he HATES underwear. I even splurged and got Cars and Woody and Buzz unders and he screams if I even think about putting it on him. He can read my mind. He knows when it's coming.

Enter older and wiser and long-lost cool-guy Taege. Tommy & his cousin Taege got to hang out this weekend - Taege lives in Logan. So they don't play with each other much. Especially not now that we live down here with the rest of the crazies. Which makes Taege an extra special cousin. "If they're not rare,  they lose their status."

Taege has the opposite potty problem. He'll wear unders, and keep them dry, but refuses to go on the potty.

Taege wore unders and we told Tommy and with a little more coaxing and "just like Taege"ing he finally let me put them on him. For the first time in his life.

He wore them all afternoon yesterday, and interrupted dinner with a potty request. Then as soon as we got home from church (in a diaper) he peed in the potty again. Then 20 minutes later, he grabbed the aforementioned adorable tushy and started yelling "no! no poop! no pooping on buzz!!!!!" so Josh ran him to  the potty and Tommy filled up the rest of his potty chart with poop stickers.

Now that we've had a success I feel like the hard work is done. He likes the unders. He ran out of the bathroom positively beaming with poop pride. He pees on command. And he doesn't want to ruin the cool-dude unders. So now we're done right? Project over?

A girl can hope.

Perspective: A Potty Story

The "proud mommy" version: Tommy stopped eating his lunch and walked up to me, signed (and said) Poooo stinky!!! So I planted his naked butt on the potty and do you know what he did? He pooped. Then he clapped for himself, signed "all done". My baby is a genius. A genius who just potty trained himself.

The "long day" version: Tommy stopped eating his lunch and walked up to me, signed (and said) Poooo stinky!!! So I planted his naked butt on the potty and he grunted and groaned and wiggled and squirmed. He signed all done and tried to get down by himself. I planted his butt on the potty at least 4 more times, tried to distract him by pointing at all the babies in the magazine and made my best poop-face and finally after loads of convincing, he pooped. Then he clapped for himself, signed "all done" and let me get him down. After wiping, I started to put the potty away and he ran out into the hallway and immediately peed all over the carpet and came back to the bathroom giggling. So I tackled him, diapered him, and gave him a treat with the rest of his lunch.

Either way I'm calling it a success.

I love this picture

Josh got too lazy to clean out the little potty and skipped straight to the big potty.

I love this picture because I can just hear Josh saying "some dinosaurs have LOOOOONG sharp teeth and LOOOONG sharp claws!"

Clarification

Tommy is not potty trained. Period. Not even close.

You can tell because there is still a "bucket-o-poo" smell in his bedroom every time I deposit a new diaper into the bucket-o-poo.

It's just that Tommy's not scared of the potty. But who would be when it's as comfy as the rocking chair, and gets almost as many stories?

I have to say that the best part of introducing the potty when he's this young is that he's pretty much CONSTANTLY peeing or pooping. So it would take a lot of effort to plant him on the potty for more than 30 seconds and get NOTHING out of it. Right? Right.

Until last night.

When I planted him on the potty and read a story or two and went to pick him up, saw the empty bowl, had a moment of "dang it...." and THEN got sprayed. Because apparently my moving him triggered the "pee now!" reflex.

Now for those of you who want to know more about Elimination Communication here's what I interpret the point to be: don't spend the first 2-3 years of your kids life training them to pee their pants, then expect them to quit in a few days. Which oddly enough works....

Of course normal potty training totally works, we can tell by all the human beings not walking around peeing their pants until they get pregnant again at which point potty training seems to become irrelevant.

But this way, you're teaching your kid from the beginning that there are appropriate places to do your business, and inappropriate places to do your business. Potty = appropriate. Pants = not appropriate.

So really all I'm doing so far is trying to get him comfortable with the potty so he won't be scared of it later. And if it saves me a few poopy diapers in the meantime, bonus!

Every time he wakes up from a nap or for the morning, I plant him on the potty and we read a few books until my legs are asleep or he's sick of pounding on the grownups toilet lid. Then if it was productive we celebrate with a "hooray for poops!" dance and move on with our day. That's it.

There are die-hards out there (hi Nancy!) and they do this from like the day they come home from the hospital, and their kids are pretty much potty trained by the time they can walk. And they're brave enough to use cloth diapers and everything. So if you wanna learn all about how you're really supposed to do it, you should stalk someone like her. Or at least read the archives from The Mother's Lounge because it's far better explained there.

The truth is I'm far too much of a sissy to do it hard core. And entirely too squeamish to deal with the consequences on days that I'm simply too lazy to read The Napping House any more times. Even though Tommy laughs when the boy "bumps the grandma!" every time. So I can't commit.

So if I count successes by deposits made, I freakin' rock. If I counted failures by diapers changed it wouldn't be such a pretty picture.

I choose to blog about the deposits made. You know, because I'm nothing if not humble.

my kids uses a potty

I know you didn't expect to hear more about my child's poop for quite a while, but our half-hearted "it might be fun" purchase and use of a baby potty have lead to multiple successes. Per day. Yes, that's right. My kid poops in the potty daily, (for 2 whole days in a row!) and pees in it 2-3 times per day. 

I'm making no effort to catch him every time. I just make him sit on the potty when he wakes up and I read him a story. If he pees or poops, great. If not, we just had story time. No big deal. 

I figure that at least this way he isn't scared of it when it comes time. So we'll work on the "only here" aspect of potty training later, but for now he's got the "it's OK here" aspect of it down pat. He pees nearly every time we put him on it.

So, hooray for Tommy!

Did you know?

Did you know that it takes exactly 3 minutes to drive from my house to the church? I know because I timed it on one of my 6 trips there today. Sad and pathetic that I DROVE there so many times today? Yes.

Did you know that the average person uses 57 sheets of toilet paper per day? That sounds excessive to me....

Did you know that roughly 40% of people answer their phone when it rings? (Based on my very scientific study where I had to call a bunch of people and left a lotta messages......VERY scientific.) I think it's because people give their phone numbers to people just for the free stuff. i.e. Josh at the Living Scriptures presentation.

Did you know that even though Josh and I searched diligently at the Utah State Fair for "best mullet" neither of us even came up with a candidate? What is wrong with people in this state? The authorities provided the environment (including deep-fried-chocolate-covered-bacon) and we simply failed to rise to the challenge.

Did you know that I am 25 and for the first time in my life went to the movies all alone yesterday? It was just one part of my impromptu mental health day. And there I sat in a nearly empty theater bawling my eyes out over a Jenifer Aniston movie guzzling the biggest Dr. Pepper I've ever had in my life.

Did you know that I bought a teeny tiny potty for my baby this week? He pees in it daily. For real. Here's a half-hearted attempt at Elimination Communication.

Did you know that there are a million people out there more busy and less whiny than me? Yeah, I already knew you did, but I need to remind myself sometimes.

Did you know that we've lived in our current house longer (by far) than any other place? For me it's the longest I've lived anywhere since my parent's house. I'm started to get stir crazy, but here we'll be for a while.

Potty Training

You people have become quite the authority on all things child-rearing and now people from all over the country are dying to ask you questions. OK the truth is that my sister has a question for you, but I'm sticking with me "all over the country" comment because she lives WAY down in Utah County. And let's face it, that feels like a VERY different part of the country.

It’s about potty training.

Here’s the situation:

My sister is the mother to the most adorable red-headed energetic 2.5 year old on the planet (3 in November). With another beautiful princess on the way, she’s getting a little nervous about double diaper duty which is causing the appropriate panic necessary to go through the potty-training experience.

Problem is she’s not quite sure what to do. Here’s what she says about the experience:

I've very inconsistently tried to encourage potty training.  Several
months ago, I bought her some "big girl" underwear and put it on with
vinyl underwear over the top.  I gave her a big drink so she'd feel
the urge to go and checked back a while later to find her contentedly
sitting in a puddle.  After that, I called it quits, but now I feel
like I have a small window of opportunity from the beginning of summer
until the end of July when baby Lucy comes.

The other night, we got out her potty chair and left it on the ground
instead of putting it on the big toilet.  She was VERY excited about
that and put every baby doll and bear on the toilet to "poop."  (She
even pointed out the imaginary poop in the bottom of the potty.)  But
she didn't go.  And then she didn't want to put her diaper back on.
She kept sitting on the chair and getting up to wander pantless around
the room.  Since we don't want to clean up accidents all over the
house and she wasn't really going potty, we wrestled her back into a
diaper and haven't tried the chair since.

My opinion is that this particular child would rather die than sit still long enough to do her business. She doesn't sit still for any other reason, so I don't know why she would suddenly desire to spend any amount of time sitting on a chair with a hole in it. Especially when the other choice means you don't even have to get out of the sandbox.....

But, dear readers and experts on all things. What are your suggestions?

Oh, and one more thing before I let you work your magic: My sister is not a sissy, so don't worry about hurting her feelings by saying things like "you just have to do it, man up!" or follow Aundrea's example with a "don't worry about it, she'll do it herself" but she is pregnant, so try not to say things like "get off your fat lazy butt and plant that child on the pot!" cuz the "fat lazy butt" comment might cause a breakdown. Also you should know that she's pretty much wonder-mom. Not one for sitting on any sized butt. So, that certainly isn't the issue.