potty

potty with your pants on? sure why not.

potty training is going to kill me. literally, if i drop over dead in the near future...the autopsy report will state, "she died while teaching her first born to crap on the commode." (seriously.) i mean, maybe i'm being a bit dramatic, but my god what a pain in the dick it is. what i really don't understand is why it's so hard? even animals are easier to train. a cat? you put it's paws in the litter and it somehow knows to take a dump in the pan. a dog? slip it some treats for crappin' in the grass and you are good to go. ella? her newest thing is hiding in an upstairs bedroom, locking the door, and pooping her pants. (fail.) a coupla weeks ago, she had a friend over to play and things got awfully quiet upstairs (this usually means trouble.) i ran up the steps and the other little girl was in ella's room, but ella was not. i said, "where is ella?" the little girl said, "i don't know." so i went to door number two, which was carrie's room and it was locked. i knocked on the door and said (loudly), "hello, what are you doing in there?!" she unlocked it, opened it just enough for me to see half of her face and said, "i'm pooping, i need pwivacy please"...and then closed the door again. (WHAT!?) i squawked, "EXCUSE ME, ELLA?!" she opened it again and said matter of factly, "i'm pooping, go away." (and shut the door again.) so i guess she was just playing another friendly game of hide and go shit your pants. apparently it's a childhood favorite. if we had a proverbial batting average for pooping and peeing on the potty...it would pretty much suck. (a swing and a miss!)

then i thought that maybe she just had the bedroom mixed up with the bathroom? so i asked her if she wanted to instead go to the bathroom and try to poop...on the potty. she screamed loudly...as if i had elmo at gunpoint and was about to pull the trigger that very moment, "NOOOOOOO MOOOMMMMEEEEEEE!!!" and so, i just let her go back in the room and crap her pants. (what else could i do?) when she came out she walked downstairs and said, "change me please, my butt itches." (you're killing me, ella. one bowel movement at a time.) my favorite part of it is when friends and family feel the need to remind me how old she is, "she SHOULD be potty TRAINED, she IS three and a HALF, you know!" guess what? i know how goddamn old she is because I WAS THERE when she was born. she made her entrance into this world via my vagina...so i'm well aware how many years she's been on this earth and also approximately how many diapers i've changed in that time. (about a billion. give or take.) so, yeah, i know her age and in an ideal world she would be potty trained by now. but she's not...so just back off. (end rant.) anyway, as you can see (from my irate nature) that this has been a struggle in our house for quite some time. at about age 2, she started going on the potty by herself...and then her sister was born. they say children regress when siblings come into the mix, but she didn't really regress...she just gave up. it's like she made a mental note that i was going to be changing another person's diapers in the house and thought, "oh hell, i'll just keep shitting my pants if this mommy person is going to just change the chubby one, too." (crap.) moreover, my mom told me that when my brother was born, i just started shitting on the floor. (equally awesome.)

so all this has been going on for a long time, and then last night something magical happened. we were all sitting on the couch after bath time, awaiting that glorious time of night we call bed time...and ella said, "i think i want to go on the potty." just like that. "i think i want to go on the potty." well it was a huge production getting her pajamas off and then she announced that she would like her minnie mouse potty to be moved out into the living room. (forget "pwivacy"...apparently she now wanted an audience. awesome.) so we pulled the potty out and tried not to make a big deal of it as she sat down. curious george was spewing out stupid songs from the television and we tried to carry on a normal conversation, all the while our 3 year old was sitting half naked waiting to relieve herself right in the middle of the living room. my one year old was trying to figure out what the hell was going on and just kept doing circles around her, staring at her and then looking at us like we all had lost our minds. (we did.) all of a sudden, the sound of trickling urine erupted into the evening air and we all got excited. (this is what our lives have come to. getting excited...about pee.) so after she finished, she stood up and said, "WELL, AREN'T YOU PROUD OF ME?!" we all high fived her and a (confused) carrie hugged her. meanwhile, she asked if she could flush it down the toilet. so there she was, with the pot of pee in both hands, prancing toward the bathroom. if she would've tripped, raining urine all over all of us, i would've died. (again, autopsy report would confirm potty training as the cause.)

so after bedtime, we sat there and i couldn't help but shake my head. is this really my life? (why yes it is.) also, i didn't know if this was the beginning of something good or just a fluke. up until this point, she was acting terrified of the toilet and everything i read said that you should, "take her into the bathroom with you when you go, so that she knows it's not a scary place." pardon me, but i'm pretty sure both of my kids have been annoying me in the bathroom since birth. i used to put a bouncy seat in there when they were really little, just so i could shit or shower if there wasn't another adult in the house. now when i'm using the facilities, they are either a stone's throw away or practically on my lap. dear authors of those books, this isn't ella's first rodeo with the toilet...she's very familiar with it. moreover, if she thinks logically about the amount of time her father spends on there...she shouldn't be scared at all. so hopefully we have turned over a new leaf yesterday and we are on our way to diaper freedom. even though carrie will still be crappin' her pants, at least i can hopefully say my three and a HALF year old will be potty trained sometime soon...that's if i don't die before hand from exhaustion. moreover, we got so excited about the pee, i can't even imgaine what kind of party we will have for the first poop. instead of high fives, will there be fist pounds and fruit punch all around? i seriously hope mine is spiked with something strong, cause openly celebrating a bowel movement is something i never thought i would do. parenting throws curveball after curveball at me, potty training is just another pitch. somedays i feel like babe ruth at bat and others i just feel like a rookie. this month i'm hoping to knock potty training out of the park...but would settle for a single, double, or triple shit in the toilet out of my toddler any day of the week. batter up!