Sunday, May 29, 2011

Best Mom Tip #135: Do the Potty Dance

I know nothing about potty training. I mean, I've read a lot about it and I've talked to everyone I know with kids, but I still feel like I know nothing. My daughter didn't like being wet and dirty and potty trained quickly. This week my son continued to play outside with both pee and poop in and on his underwear for God knows how long until I finally held him down to check his pants. That is a kind of gross that I do not understand.

So we have, for better or worse, been sitting at home for the last two days taking our almost-three-year-old boy to the potty every 15-30 minutes in an attempt to get down to just one kid in diapers. I'm hoping that with the baby graduating from formula to whole milk soon and only one box of diapers to buy we may be able to afford to buy meat again in time for the July 4th weekend. Unfortunately, this dream depends upon a toddler's cooperation and potty training is not exactly what you would call successful at this point.

Although we have had some correct placement of waste, we also have a kid who refuses to poop if he can't use his diaper. For days. He is displaying a level of determination that I think we could use to teach special forces operatives how to hold up under torture.

While I admire his strength of will, I find the entire thing messy, tedious, and a depressing waste of my master's degree.

Finally, after 15 times of peeing on himself in two days, something seems to have clicked. He has been right on target four times in a row now and I have done the Potty Dance for each success.

The Potty Dance is sung to the tune of "Shake Your Booty" and goes like this: "Dance, dance, dance! Dance dance dance! Potty Daa-aaance, whoo! Potty Daa-aaance!"

My cute boy, flush with success, spinning in his Mickey Mouse underwear, looked up at me and said, "Dat make me happy."

Me, too, buddy. Me, too.




Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Best Mom Tip #134: Know your weaknesses

Osama bin Laden is dead. I will pause while you dance.

**PAUSE**

Now that we have all stopped celebrating, I will admit to feeling a bit bloodthirsty since the news broke. I want pictures. I want details.

I suddenly thought that putting a head on a pike is not barbaric, but rather a good way of warning others not to mess with us. Maybe it could go on top of the Washington Monument.

Or maybe each state could get a piece of the body and decide what they want to do with it. Vermont could use theirs to grow organic syrup. Texas could deep fry theirs. The possibilities are endless.

All of my gruesome posturing is just bravado, though. I am really a wuss.
I know this because today I found a 3-4 foot snake in my garage and I freaked out. Badly.

I got home, opened the garage, and parked inside. I got out, walked around the car to get the baby out and took him inside and put him in his highchair for lunch. I walked back to the garage and there, right where I had been standing on the driver's side, was a really big snake.

I froze, yelled "Holy Shit!" (which is pretty funny because I don't think I've ever said that in my life), and tried to figure out what to do. My 2-year-old was still asleep in the car and was being held hostage by the evil snake lurking next to the car.

I managed to herd the snake out of the garage using a tree limb lopper, but it escaped under the porch.

Oddly, at this moment a police officer drove by and asked me if everything was alright. I explained that there was a snake under my porch. He gallantly got out, pulled the thing out from under the porch, chopped it to pieces, and threw the pieces in the sewer.

I think I would have gotten around to killing it eventually, but in the 10 minutes or so between my getting home and the officer's arrival I said "shit" about 10 times, my adrenaline was going crazy to the point that I was shaking, and I was only able to speak in an hysterical voice similar to Mickey Mouse on cocaine.

I am a wuss.

So whether you are the Special Forces men who killed bin Laden to make my world safer, or the guy who butchers cows so I can eat hamburgers, or the officer who destroys horrifically vicious snakes so that I can continue to enter and leave my house at will, THANK YOU.

I am really grateful that you guys kill things so that I don't have to.