4 Happy Family The personal blog of Kevin R. Hoffmann

Sometimes it is the people around you

Click for larger

Potty Training (or how to drop a deuce without even trying)

Let me start off by saying that those are pickles. Maya likes to place them in her Dora potty like it is a toy bin. I like like to think of it as a sign of intelligence and that she is actually going all CSI and reconstructing the crime scene and solving the mystery of the Spruce Deuce. Actually, she has never used Dora toilet yet, the only thinkg that has gone in there is Mom’s rings, her toys and Dad’s toothbrush.

We are not trying to push her, we are just letting her do her thing and let it happen when it is ready. On the floor is the Dora shrine and on the counter is the toilet ring, the Elmo potty and the Elmo doll that asks for drinks and then you have to sit him on the pot to let him go.  Maya will say Pee-Pee and we will rush like idiots and have her stripped from the bottom down faster than you can say Pi Kappa Alpha. We sit her on the toilet and get the Elmo doll and a typical conversation goes like this: 

K:Does Maya have to go PeePee? (With the eees going up an octave in your typical moron-parent voice)
C: Elmo has to go PeePee(At this point you squeeze a button in his hand and Elmo talks)
E: Elmo is thirsty. Can Elmo have a drink?(Now we let Maya put the bottle in his mouth that triggers a button)
E: Thank you(The whole time we are listening for any drip, drop or commotion to indicate that Maya has gone. Usually she is just looking at us like the idiots we are.)
E: Uh OH Elmo has to go!K: OH no Maya, Elmo can only speak in the third-person and he has to use the potty!(At this point you can put him on his little plastic toilet and he will cheer and then sing a song about how he rocked the casbah and how his poop doesn’t stink. But to also make sure it is OK if you don’t make Elmo has a built-in response if you do not sit him on his toilet in time.)
E: Elmo didn’t make to the potty in time. That’s OK, I will try again next time. Just remember it is OK if you don’t make it. Mommy and Daddy will hang your soiled sheets out of your bedroom window for all of the neighborhood kids to see so they will laugh at you. Yes, they will laugh and point fingers at you and make you feel really bad. Elmo needs matches.   

Sorry, a little tangent. I have not actually seen Maya use either receptacle. I cringe when I bathe her and she drinks the water because I know at least at the kiddie pool the kids have about 10 cubic feet of space, in the tub she has a lot less.  I was giving her a bath and she stopped playing and just look at me, you know, the look. 

K: Maya, do you need to go potty? 

No answer she just laid on her stomach and farted. She played around for a little bit and then stopped and looked at me. 

K: Maya, do you need to go potty?Still, nothing. In hindsight, I forgot that I was dealing with 1.5 year old. She is not going to respond to me. She is not like the dogs and will stand by the door until I let her out. I can sit there and ask her a million different ways, but I know she is not equipped yet to inform me that she is performing a bowel movement. 

And she did. It was slow motion where you see the lead character mouthing the word “Nooooooo” and my arms were like weights as I went to grab her in the middle of her exertion. 

It truly was majestic the way it just popped out and rose to the surface of the water; I felt like a midwife performing my first at-home birth. I pulled her out of the water and watched her toys floating and bumping into the fecal matter like a bunch of driftwood smacking up against buoys. We have one of those flat, floppy plastic drain stoppers. I pulled it out and handed it to C and jammed one of the plastic dolphins in the drain. 

I yelled for Courtney and she shook her head with a smile. She took the bundled up kid upstairs to wash her off and I got to deal with the tub. After putting on the hazmat suit I got to “pan for gold” trying to get all of the disparate parts and pieces and corn out. We do not have a basement so I did not want to just let everything go down the drain. In case there was a problem with the plumbing I did not want to have things get worse. We are freaked out about this, really. C and I dwell on really odd things. 

I gathered up all of the poop-tainted toys and put them into a bag. (If you know us, you can imagine how many toys this kids has.) I took them all into the kitchen and cleaned and scrubbed them and let them soak in a solution overnight. 

As I was finishing up, C yelled from upstairs to come quick. I bounded up the steps to find Courtney holding Maya in a towel. 

C: Maya pulled the stopper out and it folded up and went down the drain. 

Yes, it was a great night, I am not sure what the half-life of plastic is; especially if it is continuously pounded with water, but after using my fingers, a coat hanger and coming to the understanding that if I lost as much hair as Courtney had in that sink I would be bald three times over. 

It was gone. Irretrievable. 

Thankfully we have not had any problems yet and the water continues to flow. Maya is still fascinated with the whole process and loves to watch her Mom pee. I am confident that I will be able to figure this whole thing out eventually and I am sure at some point I am going to be making up doing the PeePee song and dance. I will upload that video when available.