Copycat

Toy of the moment. A rock that looks like a camera. Guess what she sees a lot of around here?

Which reminds me of the time one of the kids came across an ironing board in a “home center” at some sort of playgroup, and had no idea what it’s purpose was. Had never seen one before.

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This Afternoon

Once a week, we walk Jay to knitting. It’s a drop-in class at the local second-hand shop. L used to go, and Jay used to come with me to drop her off. Jay used to sit quietly, mesmerized by the knitters, while I browsed for clothes. Now it’s her turn to take the class, and she loves it. She loves the act of knitting, the scarf that get’s longer and longer, and the chance to sit and chat with the other little knitters.

Tee has no interest in knitting, but he likes these days too, because after we pick Jay up, we go for a hot chocolate.

Cosy, huh? I love the way the yarn looks on the shelves. All those colors….

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From the Trenches of Toilet Training

In response to my friend Angie’s toilet training trials, I thought I’d share my most horrific toilet training moment.

Let me just set the stage by saying that up until kid #3, I rather immodestly thought of myself as a gifted toilet trainer. I just didn’t understand what all the fuss was about. I was clearly a skilled, adept mother who was perhaps slightly more in tune with her children than most parents, because it went so effortlessly with numbers 1 and 2. Basically, I waited until I was sick and tired of wiping a poopy toddler bum (usually right after a newborn came along to provide teeny tiny contrast), then pointed out the potty, explained the function, took away the diapers “the store doesn’t have any more, sorry” and that was pretty much that.

Then came #3. No interest in leaving diaperhood behind. Refused to use the potty. Pooped into his training pants multiple times a day. Very, very slow progress. I, of course, refused to allow “regression”, not to mention the fact that I had already given away all the big boy diapers. It was a frustrating time.

We made slow progress, but eventually we were able to leave the house with relative confidence, provided, of course, that there were bathrooms immediately available. So, one fine day, the day of the Toilet Training Nightmare, we went to the library.

The library that we went to almost every Friday, for storytime.

This particular Friday, I was doing my best to select the exact books that R needed for whichever project he was working on at the time, while I kept an eye on #3 and tried to keep baby #4 (in the front pouch on my chest) from yanking all of the books off the shelves. Then #3 tugged on my sleeve, saying he had to go pee. Yay! Off we went, asked for the bathroom key, trotted downstairs to the bathroom, went in, unbuckled the overalls (poor choice of attire, given the stage he was in, I realized in retrospect), sat on the toilet, and…….nothing. Ok, no big deal, yay! thanks for telling mama, lets go back upstairs. Back we go, one toddler step at a time, all the way up the stairs, hand back the key, back to finding those darn books.

Two minutes later….tug, tug. “Mama…mama….gotta go mama!” Okay! Off we go! Same routine, same 10 minutes, same result. Nothing. Back to the bookshelves.

This happened four more times over half an hour. Baby #4 was done being patient by now, getting squirmy. I was hot, sweaty, and getting a little irritated. I should have just called it a day and gone home, but I was determined to get whichever books I had come for, so I went back to the dinosaur section yet again, and this time, the 6th time since we had arrived, when #3 pulled on my sleeve, I said “Just a sec.”

Big mistake. It took no more than 5 minutes for me to find the book I needed, and get up to the checkout , but by the time I was putting the books on the counter, I could tell by the look on my boy’s face that we were in for trouble.

Hoping to avert disaster, I picked him up and sat him on the counter, thinking, I guess, that the sitting might stop whatever flow was imminent. Bad move. Nothing was stopping the inevitable. When this boy had to go, he went. He’s a major fruit eater now, and he was then. He’s never had a solid BM in his life, and this was no exception. The seepage was immediate. Out through the overall bottoms, all over the counter, even dripping to the floor. I grabbed him up, choked out a “I think we’ll need a tissue or something over there!” pushed through the line of people behind us, and lumbered down the stairs with the crying, reeking, dripping boy clutched against the screeching baby on my chest.

Have you ever been in one of those public bathrooms that uses the really cheap toilet paper? The kind that is less than one-ply thick, is on an industrial size roll, and is virtually impossible to tear off in more than one square at a time? That’s the kind we were in. There I was, kneeling on the tile floor, with a squalling baby hanging off my front, scraping at the legs of my 2-year old (or was he closer to 3?) in the vain attempt to clean him up. I had pulled off his overalls, and his underwear, and then ended up having to take his shirt off too. When he said he had to go, he really meant it. I was dabbing and scraping, he was hopping, and squirming, and crying, and stepping in his dirty pants, and then smearing more mess on even more tiles, and then it was all over his hands, and the walls, so I tried using one of those raspy brown paper towel sheets they have for drying off your hands, but they hurt his skin, making him cry even more, scaring the baby, who I couldn’t take out and comfort, because of all the filth, so finally, I just gave up. I gathered up all of the soiled clothes, left the bathroom in it’s shocking condition, and went to get my purse from the front desk.

Holding my little boy by the hand.

Naked, except for his shoes and socks, and smeared in dried feces.

I’ve blanked out the rest of it, so I don’t remember whether we got the books or not. We still go to that very same library, though.

As for using rewards, I tried stickers, moved on to (my fallback) Smarties, and yes, resorted to outright bribery with some coveted thing or other, but absolutely nothing worked. It was just a long, long, long, process, taking almost a year, and I think it only ended up happening when he was plain good and ready, developmentally. 

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