You GoGirl

Since potty training Lucy, Matt and I have had some *ahem* interesting conversations about women and using the bathroom. It went something like this...

"Ugh. When is this GIRL gonna learn how to not make such a mess when she pees?"
"Sweetheart. That's how women pee."
"It goes all over the place like that? She can't just pee like; in a stream?"

"Nope. That's called GIRL PARTS."

It has been aggravating to go from training a boy child to a girl child because you do actually have to go find a bathroom rather than advising them to find a tree and drop trou...

But then I just saw this:

I don't think I need to go into an anatomy lesson to teach you how it works. But it is designed so that women don't HAVE to sit to pee. They are pitching it as a device to make it more sanitary, like you don't have to sit on that NASTY toilet in the bathroom in the gas station in Skanksville USA. Just whip this baby out, stand up like a man and sweet, sweet relief is yours.

And I have to be honest. I thought about/am thinking about it. It is totally ridiculous. But that child has to pee about every six and half minutes. Plus, it might come in handy sometime. It is a COMPLETELY ridiculous product. But is it? I think I would use it. I hate dirty bathrooms. And I have some special peeing issues myself. Dangit, now I AM thinking about it. I mean, you can pee. Anywhere? Go check it out yourself:

GoGirl Their tagline is "Because life's greatest adventure shouldn't be finding a bathroom." Good advertising at least.

Ridin' Dirty

Over Thanksgiving and Christmas, Lucy decided that she wanted to be potty trained. It's awfully convenient to have a child with enough sense in her head to want to stop walking around in her own feces and bodily fluids, so we happily complied with her wishes by rewarding her with m&m's.

She has done great with only a few accidents here and there over the course of a few months. In the last week, she is even dry at nap time. I mean, what child does this? We are trying to reward Asher with another trip to Disneyland if he can make it through nap time dry, so we are pretty pumped about Lucy and her bladder abilities.

Except that she, like most children, does not like to go #2. And she is more strong willed than most children. And so she has just been holding it. FOR FIVE DAYS. Since I am more strong willed than her; I have changed her diet to make her body work against her will.

It all came to a head (so to speak) the other night when Matt was out playing poker (of course). I was cleaning the kitchen and Lucy came down the stairs and said "Poo Poo." while pointing to her bum. I took inventory and realized that we had a situation on our hands. Yep. She pooped her pants.

So, I got her cleaned up with a few tears. She wasn't too happy either.
Five minutes later. It happened again. Ugh.
This time, I find her in the bathroom poop on the floor. Smeared down her legs. On the potty. Everywhere.
Throw the child in the bath. Asher is watching TV unattended and jumping on the furniture and I have poop on every surface in my bathroom and two pairs of poop covered underwear.

Guess which strong-willed child is working on breaking her mother?

My Sweet Little Angel

Tonight, we sat down to eat dinner and we were all digging in and Asher just looked at us and said, "STOP! We have to pray!" So we joined hands and Matt asked Asher to give the blessing. So Asher held Lucy's hand, bowed his head and said, "God, thank you for this food. Amen." Then, looking very pleased with himself, sat back down and ate his dinner.
We were so in love with him!
The same child woke up from his nap yesterday and decided he didn't want to poo in his diaper and so he took it off and pooped on his floor. In three piles. Thankfully, I was running errands and so Matt had to clean it up. Cause I might have puked on my child otherwise.

Seriously.

A New Day?

I am so much to update you on and I will be working in the next day to talk about this past weekend, which was amazing. But, I have something else to tell you.

Asher has begun potty training.

Yes, that is right. I have no expectations that this will actually work and I am sure that this is going to become the most frustrating portion of my life. But, I could tell that we had a window. He has been talking about potty's in the past month and seemed interested in the last few weeks. SO...last week, both kids had colds and they sounded like (once again) they have both been smoking since they were born. I didn't feel like getting kicked out of the YMCA because my children infected everyone with their colds, so we stayed home for the entire day. That never happens. We all get cabin fever, so I try to keep them moving a lot of the morning typically, so staying home was a big deal committment. Since we were home, I just decided that we were going to give the ole potty a try.

So, I pumped Asher FULL of applejuice for a good hour. If he didn't have his sippy cup in hand, I was hounding him about it. "Where is your sippy cup??? Can you drink that for me please? Would you like more juice???" He drank and drank until he was about to explode, which is when I took his diaper off and put underwear on him. He wet through those and one more pair. I finally wised up and didn't let him out of my sight. I asked if we could read books while he sat on the potty. We read books for like five minutes, when he started peeing! Yes, that is right. My son peed three times in 30 minutes.

Then about every 7-8 minutes after that, we made regular trips back to the potty. By noon, he had peed three times in the potty and even pooped! I was feeling very accomplished.

I didn't want to make it a high pressure situation, so I put a diaper on him for his nap and we were done with the potty for the day and the rest of the weekend.

Tonight, he took a bath with Lucy and played in the living room naked for about 40 minutes when I saw him doing to pee pee dance. He has never even come close to doing this before. He knew that he should go sit rather than just let it go! That was big time! So we went and sat down and I read a book and he peed just a little. I mean BARELY. And he knew that he could get away with asking for an M&M. So I caved, but I kept trying to get him to sit back down. But he was losing it and I didn't want to make it a rough situation. So I let it go. But about four minutes later, I knew he needed to go back in there. Matt took him this time and he pooped and peed again!

Hooray!
I have no idea if we will keep this up. But since we are going to be home this week, I think that we can make more of an effort than if we were on the road somewhere. I am really excited, because believe me...the cost of diapers adds up. And Asheville guilt makes me feel terrible about all of the diapers going into the landfill, cause you know that crap ain't disintegrating. We might well be in diapers for the next year with Asher, but feel free to keep the loving thoughts coming our way, cause I would LOVE for those days to be over.