Returning to my roots

I have been potty training for close to two years now. Two years, and all I have to show for it are two kids who are minimally toilet trained. Although, I have to say, Bean has done better in the last two months than Jacob has in the last two years. And lest you think I'm just a crappy teacher, actual certified grandmas have tried to train The Jake. It ain't just me.

I may not have toilet trained children to show for all my efforts, but I do have a fabulous collection of stories. And after a few blogs straying into self-revelation and outright plagiarism, I've decided to return to what I know best—poo. Here are a couple of recent gems from the Department of Elimination…

You Can't Hide:

One afternoon Jacob was playing nicely in his room when he came out and told me he needed to wash his hands. A three year old boy wanting to wash any body part is about as likely as peace in the Middle East, so obviously I questioned this. He just said his hands were dirty… I observed that he smelled vaguely of poop. The usual line of questioning followed. "Did you go poop?" "No." "Are you sure?" "Yes." "Can I check?" "Yes." No poop. Hm. (Sidetrack here for a moment-- Jacob had already pooped in his pants that day, and so I'd taken away his underwear. He was only wearing shorts, making it difficult to tell if in fact an incident had occurred.) So, I let him go, but the next time I passed his room I definitely smelled poo. I started looking around. Jacob was very helpful. As I looked in the closet, he said, "Nope, no poop in the closet." Before I could even look anywhere else: " And I didn't go poop under the bed." Sure enough, he had thrown poop under the bed to hide it. Just another day, I tell you.

This One is Just Icky:

One Thursday I went to Storytime as usual. About halfway through, I thought Norah smelled a little funky, but decided to wait until we got home to deal with it (the library is no place for dealing with poo, let me tell you.) By the time I got home, I found that Norah had done one of those numbers that was up her back, down her legs, around the front… I thought maybe I could just wipe her up, but thirty wipes into it realized that I had to hose her down. In the meantime, both Jacob and Brynn were going potty: Jacob on the big one, and Bean on her little pink potty chair. It was pretty chaotic to have all this going on in my tiny bathroom. Finally I get Norah cleaned up and laid her down on the rug to get her dried off and dressed. As I finish getting her clothes on, Brynn gets tired of waiting for me to help her empty the potty into the toilet and say "bye-bye" (as per our little ritual) and decides to empty the potty into the sink. The sink she can't reach. The sink she can't reach right above my head. Why the sink instead of the toilet? I'm sure I don't know. And so, both Norah and I ended up covered in pee and rather unhappy. The end.