Blog Archives
Bodily Functions Nightmare
Yeah, so, going on road trips with little kids is kind of nightmarish. Why, you ask? Well, for starters, when you have a kid that is pretty newly potty trained, you get a lot of false alarms. Or, in K’s case, her standard explanation for wanting to pee every 10 minutes is “but my body just isn’t empty yet!”. Shoot me now.
For the grand post-Christmas Vegas adventure, we had not even reached the freeway yet, when she started to randomly gag and cough and squawk about needing to “frow up!”. Cue rapid turn-off and pull over maneuvering, and we went around and supplied her with her “frow up bucket”, AKA the bucket insert in her emergency travel potty chair. She gagged and sputtered for a few minutes but nothing came up. So I decreed a motherly rule that she had to hold on to her bucket and keep it close for the rest of the trip.
Shortly after that, she quietly dropped off to sleep for almost three hours. I was feeling pretty good about the trip at that point, but I should have known she was just lulling me into complacency. When she woke up, she calmly informed us she needed to potty. No problem, right? We were only about 5 miles from the next town. But no, that was too far away so yeah, cue another roadside pull-off maneuver for her to use her travel potty chair. Of course, she managed to overshoot a bit and pee all over the van carpet as well. Oh well, better than the rubix-cube-carseat (takes an act of god to take the thing apart and put it back together again.)
A bit after that, we stopped to take a break and get some early dinner. She used the restroom there, and yet literally less than 10 minutes after getting in the car, she started whining about needing the bathroom again. Why did I score the child with a bladder the size of a lima bean? So again with the portable potty chair, and again with the overshooting and dousing the carpet. Sigh.
We finally got back on the road and made good progress….until we got near the dam, where we got stuck in a miserable traffic jam for 2+ hours. And yes, as expected, about 1 hour into it, she started the potty chant. Unfortunately though, traffic was sporadically inching forward every now and then so we couldn’t get out and help her use the portable potty, nor was there any shoulder to pull over. So in a stroke of desperate maternal problem-solving, I reached back and released her from confinement and had her take off her pants and slip on one of the nighttime pullups we had fortunately just purchased at our prior stop. Not a very elegant solution, but again, better than peeing in her carseat.
Not to mention the inherent challenges in staying in a place with tall sinks, no appropriate step stools, nuclear-fusion-temperature grade water heaters, etc etc. Add to it going out on the town to many different public restrooms with auto flush toilets (K is TERRIFIED of these!), and her amazing knack for needing to use the bathroom EXACTLY at the moment when any food arrives at any restaurant table.
The best is when she is sitting on an autoflush toilet, totally cringing, and wipes herself and immediately claps her hands over her ears to prepare for the noisy tsunami flush, only to realize…the used toilet paper is still in her hand.
Isn’t parenting AWESOME?!
Update from the Frontlines
Making progress...one sticker at a time
For all concerned parties,
Potty-training is progressing I guess. I don’t know that anyone is winning the war at this point but the parental units are at least holding their ground. K is wearing big girl undies to school most all days, and she has been doing pretty well except for one horrible day with *three* wet accidents. At home, our strategy has been to keep her naked on the bottom half as much as humanly possible, because we discovered along the way that she is actually extremely reliable about using the toilet when naked. The rationale is that the more she uses the toilet, the more of a habit it will become.
Sounds reasonable, right?
In practice, she has been pretty willing to go along with it, except while she doesn’t mind peeing in the potty, she does try her best to save up all her poo for a pullup. Occasionally she’ll poo in the potty, but she tries reaaaallllly hard to avoid it.
She even asks for a pullup when she is feeling the urge to poo, which I guess is kind of good because it shows she is thinking ahead about her biological needs, yet counter-productive to the ultimate goal. She even tried scamming FF into a pullup “because her buns were too cold” yesterday. Yeah, right, in our 80 degree house.
Toilet Tantrum, Prozak Anyone?
I keep getting little glimpses of tantalizing hope that there may be light at the end of the potty-training tunnel. I really thought we were making progress. We have been diaper free for almost two weeks, using pull-ups mostly, but with a good handful of big-girl undie sessions too. She had a few spontaneous, successful potty events, and while remaining uninterested in performance motivators, I had hoped we were going the right direction. And then, there was this morning.
K was slated to go hang out at K2′s house, to spend time being un-bored with the more interesting toys her cousin possesses. So I figured, hey this is great, another chance to practice wearing big girl undies out of the house! Naturally, the fact that someone else would have to deal with any accident cleanup (my dear, dear brother) never entered into my mental equation. Of course, I was going to do the courtesy of making sure K did her morning business before leaving, so when we got up, I gave her a few minutes to wake up and hopefully un-grumpify, and then gently herded her into the bathroom to weewee before she went in her pullup anyway. [side note: no matter how hard you resist, when you become a parent, you will start using words like weewee, potty, ouchies, etc. CANNOT.BE.AVOIDED.]
She instantly turned into a rabid snarling wildebeest. Or something like that. She did actually climb up onto the potty, whereupon she snarled and fussed and did absolutely nothing. Wearing my most patient, saintly expression, I thanked her for trying and we washed, and proceeded to get dressed. She snarled over that, and over breakfast (which she refused to eat anyway as per the norm). While patiently overlooking her wildebeest antics, and giving her some space to calm down [read: ignoring her altogether while checking my email] she came running in all freaked out about (and no, this is not a typo) “peeping in her pants!”. She was squawking about not being able to find her other underwear, which made no sense because she has about 18 pair in the drawer/laundry basket.
I reassured; I tried to soothe; I calmly asked her to go in the bathroom (a mere 6 feet away) and pull off her wet pants while I went and retrieved clean clothes. She screeched and went all wildebeest again, saying ”I CAN’T DO IT!”. So I said, alrighty then, just go in the bathroom and stand there and wait for me. So she snarls, screeches, AND runs into the bathroom and flops herself on the wide edge of the tub (facedown) and starts kicking her feet. Offering help elicited more screaming. I sat and stared and otherwise ignored.
So then she realized her wildebeest ways aren’t doing her any good and she stands up and does a token tug on her pants, and starts screaming about not being able to pull them down. Further ignoring the wildebeest produces the desired effect and she tries again, this time successfully removing the offending garments to her ankes. More screeching and foot flapping ensues, and finally they are thankfully off. I praised; and was just about to go looking for clothes, when she hops up on the potty and says “Mom, now I’m peeping again!”. So while praising her, she lifts one leg up to rest her foot on the edge, to get a better view and visually verify her urinary prowess. And then the screeching begins about the “peeps going all over!”.
Could this get worse? Yes it could. I suggested to her that putting her silly leg down would fix the splashing problem, and she makes a loud “humph” sound, spins around on the potty sideways (still peeing) so her back is to me, and proceeds to start kicking the toilet with her heels and screaming some more for good measure. Prompting her to clean up with the flushable wipes sponsored another round of frantic wildebeest behavior, as did flushing and handwashing.
So, to make a long story short, she did finally get redressed, somewhat calmed down, and transported over to K2′s house. No breakfast but hey, who’s counting?
I thought seriously about the situation all the way to work, and decided on a new strategic battle plan. She definitely can use the toilet when necessary, but since she chooses to avail herself of the convenience of diapers/pullups, I’m going to remove the choice. Yep, it’s going to have to be cold turkey (except at night or when we will be out of the house for long periods of time) because I know she doesn’t like the feeling of an accident, so hopefully that in and of itself will prove to be the best motivator of all. Also, I saw a Dora sticker chart at Target and I’m going to get it and institute a simple policy: 1 sticker for weewee, 2 for poo, and a full chart means a trip to CHUCK E CHEESE’S! She’s been twice, and is obsessed. I have no shame in using that to my advantage.
After all, it is war.
