More humor - potty horrors

Our girls are ready to potty train. Which is what Bjorn is doing today. However, the pre-training fascination with all things potty-related (especially pee and poo) has given us a couple of fun anecdotes. I'm too tired to write this well, but you should get the gist of how things have been going.

WARNING: Parents will think this is hilarious. Everyone else is at risk of thinking it is disgusting. Do not read while eating.




You've been warned.




There are actually two potty anecdotes, which I will record here for posterity, and also so I can drag these stories out when my kids are teenagers, after they graduate from college, and when one of my daughters is running for President. Or taking vows to become a nun, that would be just as funny.

The first: My daughters have started enjoying using the potty. They also have been starting to play make-believe games, like pretending to be a kitty, or pretending rounded blocks with a square block on top are a car.

Make-believe games, like pretending the vent in their bedroom becomes a potty when they remove the cover.

That's right. Our daughters have been peeing in their bedroom vent. Who knows how manny times. Ugh. I guess that explains the strange smell in our house (it seems to be mostly better now).



Which leads to the second story: To try and curtail the vent-peeing, we left a baby potty in their room one night (since it seems to happen after bedtime usually).

Two hours later, they still hadn't fallen asleep. We went in, and found that one of our daughters had a very large bowel movement in her diaper (and was obviously a little sick, to boot), removed the diaper, and placed the non-gushy parts of the diaper into the potty.

The amazing thing is, she apparently remained standing the entire time since she removed her diaper - which had obviously happened a while ago - since her bum was filthy, but the bedroom was mostly clean. We had to wash a few blankets, but the carpets and walls were perfectly clean, and there were enough clean blankets that we didn't have to go hunt for more.

We are really lucky that the daughter who did this is the one with a strong sense of "clean" and "yucky". Really lucky. Really, really lucky.

Time flies . . .

. . . when you have waves of illnesses going through your home, are buying your first house, and are nearing the beta release of your product at work. Has it really been three weeks since the last time I updated?

Not for lack of things to say, I assure you. I went through a fascinating lunch meeting with several other working moms whose husbands are SAHDs that is screaming for a blog entry (later, though), and the girls have been doing tons of neat stuff. Lent is always a time for reflection, and all kinds of meaningful thoughts have been ambling through my brain. There are the hiccups in the weaning process . . . in other words, fairly normal life for a young family of four.

Right now I'm too caught up in the thousands of details of our busy lives to focus on anything else. So that's what I'll write on - the details.

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I want to start with Lenora's latest five-word sentence: "I want . . . more . . . pepper . . . too!" The story behind this is pretty funny. Our girls saw us putting pepper on our food. Since we like spicy stuff, we use quite a bit. So of course, they wanted some as well. So we put a little pepper in a pile on their plate, assuming that they would taste it and then demand milk and get upset with us - but would hopefully also learn something. Well, no such "luck". They dipped their broccoli into the pepper - and LOVED it! Iliana demanded to be allowed to serve herself her own pepper, and that was when Lenora delivered another fine five-word zinger.

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The current big craze / phrase in the household is, "purple, purple, purple, hey!" My MIL's SO started this, and it's now one of the girls' favorite phrases. In general, purple is really in style around here. And orange. I'm just happy it's not pink. I'm not very fond of pink.

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We've been having fun dreaming about what we want to do with our new house. It's a big house in excellent condition, but cost more than I had originally planned on spending. I'm honestly struggling with feeling embarrassed about it - and both the dreams and the embarrassment deserve their own posts.

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I also want to write a post on health care. After going from no care, to little care, to the best care around - I have a few thoughts on the matter.

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Edited to add: This post claims to have been written by Bjorn, but it wasn't. I (Ethel) just accidentally posted it from his Google account. Whoops. I'll fix it later.

Day 12 of mother-encouraged weaning

Well, it certainly doesn't feel like I'm weaning the girls. While we are making progress (I think), it's mostly at bedtime - and they are nursing more at other times to make up for it, so they don't actually nurse less. The advantage is that bedtime is the hardest time to distract the girls from nursing, so if they quit nursing at bedtime I just need to focus on distracting them from nursing during the afternoon to go nursing-free. Now we are offering them a choice of pacifiers, or milk right before bed - seems to be working, although we'll have to wean from the pacifiers later.

I think once they are routinely skipping the bedtime nursing, I'll probably try to have them skip nursing all day one day a week, then two the next week, then three days, and so on until they are just nursing on weekends.

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Some neat things the girls have started doing:

Lenora is learning her colors. I thought she might be starting to grasp them about a month ago, so Bjorn and I have been working with her (and a little with Iliana, but she doesn't seem to get colors as well). She now recognizes purple easily, and requests purple items and orange items specifically. She is starting to get green, and yellow and will occasionally recognize red or blue correctly.

Iliana, on the other hand, is practicing another skill: Asking, "Why?" This one blind-sided me. I simply wasn't prepared to have to start justifying our rules to our children quite this early. The first time she clearly asked it, she wanted to know why she shouldn't go downstairs after her bath. I fumbled out something about how it was inconvenient to have her downstairs while we're upstairs and how we were busy trying to get pajamas and diapers on her. I needn't have bothered working at it so hard - she was more interested in getting any explanation at all. She looked so pleased with herself by the time I was done talking!

Lenora has started singing her "AFB's" - that is, the Alphabet Song, but a bit tuneless and with random letters that she likes alternating with F. "A, F, B, F, Y, F, A . . . " Iliana isn't as good, but does sing her "UBU's" - mostly just alternating between U and B, and with absolutely no tune at all.

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And the big anecdote . .. We were watching an episode of Full House from the season with the twin boys. In this episode, Jess has to punish his toddlers, and during their time-out they call him "mean Daddy." Ouch. I joke to Bjorn that if we're not careful, Lenora will pick up on that and start saying it. About two minutes later, she does just that - "Mean Daddy!" and laughs.

But it gets better . . . when I start encouraging her to say "Nice Daddy" instead, she first repeats herself for a bit - then starts saying "Nice Mommy". If she weren't a toddler, you'd think I'd have set this up ahead of time and bribed her.

And a little more . .. we finally get her to say "Nice Daddy," so in the interest of equal treatment (or something), she spontaneously decides to also throw in "Mommy bad."

Definitely a story worth writing down and saving for when she gets older.

Day 1 of mother-encouraged weaning

I just put my girls to bed without nursing for the first time in 3 or 4 months. Even though I came home 90 minutes before bed, and even though I was interacting closely with them most of that time, they still accepted my discouragement of nursing. First DH helped me distract them with dinner, and they accepted my refusal to nurse in exchange for extra cheese and frozen teething toys. Then when they started asking for milk again we moved to baths, and they were happy with that. Then stories and pajamas and one more story, and then Iliana climbed into bed without being asked - so I finished reading Lenora the story quickly, tucked them in, and started giving out kisses.

Finally Iliana realized she wanted milk and started to cry. We told her firmly but kindly that it was too late and we were going night-night, and then turned the light out and left. We know from experience that any attempts to calm and soothe this late in the bedtime routine usually backfire, as the other child gets upset and confused by the change. Iliana wasn't happy about it, but she didn't melt down either and quit complaining as soon as we left the room - and moved on to playing with her sister, rather cheerfully.

Lenora is actually still awake, almost an hour later, talking to herself quietly. They've been doing this at bedtime lately - playing, chatting, singing, and occasionally running around the room after we put them to bed and walk out. It's very cute, and the thing that really impresses me is that they will put themselves back to bed without any fuss when they get tired, with no help from us.

And now . . . silence. Wow.