Potty Training…The Lows
Posted on: February 1, 2013
Potty training. It’s really a fun time full of cheering and bribing and washing shit out of fabric. Baby W has his jar full of Smarties on top of the TV..ready for when I try to lure him onto the toilet. So far, things have been going well.
I’m going to pretend that the 2 times he peed in G’s closet didn’t happen…especially since one of those times he was supposed to be going into the bathroom but made a beeline for G’s room. Poor G…he said “THIS IS WHY HE ISN’T ALLOWED IN MY ROOM!!!”. Ummmm, who could’ve predicted that the kid would squat in your freaking closet?? Make sure your toys are picked up!
W was dry for 2 days in his adorable little teeny gitchies! Seriously…can they make those things any more adorable???? Today we went for coffee after dropping Girly off at preschool. I thought “Hey, I will do some studying. W will entertain himself with toys and cookies. Life is great!”. We settled in and he said “Mama, I need to pee.”.
The washroom is in the next building.
I asked if maybe he could just pee in his diaper and he said “Yes. No…I need to pee in toilet.”. Whatever…we’ll go to the washroom.
W has a thing about being mostly nekkid to go pee so we’re in the bathroom in a church basement (which is, strangely, hot as hell!!) and he’s stripping down (including his socks). I sit him up on the toilet and do the countdown (3, 2, 1, BLAST OFF!).
Then he pees on me. Like a fire hose. It shoots over the front of the toilet and onto me as I was squatting in front of him. I try desperately to aim it into the toilet and I swear it shoots straight up…completely covering my hand in pee. I am grabbing at the toilet paper with my free hand and the fucking single ply paper is breaking in single squares. SINGLE SQUARES! There is pee fucking everywhere and I can’t get more than 3 squares of toilet paper!
When the pee was finally finished (no joke: this was post-cryogenic Austin Powers pee), I wiped down my hand, his legs, the toilet, and the floor before W pointed out the pee on my leg. He had peed all over my right calf and all over my entire crotch area..making it look like I had wet myself.
And then it hit me….we still have to go back to the coffee shop. I look like I lost bladder control and I have to go back to the coffee shop. Where people are. I re-dressed W and buttoned my jacket over the wet spot. Honestly, what else am I going to do? I can’t go home and change so I had to go back with wet pants…worried the whole time that I smelled like urine.
Forgive My Life 
February 2, 2014 at 2:52 pm
I too am a mom; my two boys grew up so I guess that makes me an experienced mom. first a word to Tara and Billy, something I wish I had heard when my boys were small. I read this recently quoted from a father / psychologist by his young adult child: “Raising kids is front-loaded,” meaning the effort you bring to the task and joy of raising your children is the hard part, and the satisfaction they bring as adults is the easy part. that said, your potty training story made me think of #1 son Nathan. he was well potty-trained w/o much drama in San Diego by two years old, and at four or so he was acting out: he peed out the upstairs window as I chatted with a neighbor, another young mother, on my front step (condo, so neighbors were close together). even tho he didn’t get us “wet” I lost my cool over that one. shortly after, he peed off my s-i-l’s balcony when we were house guests about five hours north in SLO. as this appeared to be turning into a pattern, I brought my problem to a more experienced mom, the director of Nathan’s afternoon Unitarian preschool, Patty. she had a slightly older boy, and told me what she did when her son pooped in Dad’s shoes well after he was potty trained. she suggested doing the same thing thing I did training: start over, and instead of getting unhinged and punishing his lapse(s) or spanking, just reinforce the heck out of using the potty properly. I thought it sounded crazy, and it might not work w/ every kid, but it sure worked w/ my ADHD four-year-old. I didn’t want to reinforce w/ food due to family weight concerns, so it was all about praise and reward such as praising every time he used the toilet, and a small toy or outing for a week w/ no lapses. btw your beef heart recipe is in my slow cooker as I type, so thanks for making it available 🙂