The Indignities of Being a Toddler

I think one of the really interesting things about having a kid is that sometimes I find myself having mini-flashbacks to my own childhood. It's always something small that does it. Caitlyn will do something ridiculous and I'll find myself remembering when I would do that as a child. And wondering why children are so utterly fucking spastic.

There are a few things I've noticed recently that cause Caitlyn great pain. These are things that I do as an adult too, simple, everyday things. Things that I do not fear. That are not even remotely painful. And yet, somehow, my toddler finds them absolutely traumatic to the point of running away when I even suggest that they may happen.

At first I couldn't understand it, but when I really thought about it, I can remember these exact things being horrible as a kid. Daily things I had to survive, despite the pain and indignity of the tasks. And when I think of them now, I can't help but realize that maybe my childhood wasn't quite as hard as I imagined it to be.

Are you ready for this? The list of the things Caitlyn finds to be physically and emotionally torturous? Let's get into it then:

Pooping: Do you remember when pooping was difficult? When it hurt to push out your poops? I guess as an adult my butthole is regulation sized now, so I can't understand it anymore. But for Caitlyn? She hates to poop. She whines and complains that her butt hurts. I regularly find her hiding in a corner, crapping her pants, because pooping on the toilet is simply an indignity she refuses to suffer.

Shampoo Eyes: You guys? Why the fuck won't she just close her eyes when I rinse shampoo out of her hair? I've tried to explain it to her so many times- your eyes WON'T FUCKING HURT IF YOU JUST CLOSE THEM, but she seems rather convinced that if she does close her eyes, I'm just going to splash her face with acid or something. I mean, that's basically the equivalent of rinsing shampoo out of her hair anyway, right?

Getting Stuck in Shirts: Every time I put a shirt on Caitlyn, she freaks out for 10 seconds while I try to thread her giant lightbulb head through the neck hole. I can't help but remember the panic I would go into as a kid when my head would get stuck in a shirt. I was always pretty sure I was about to suffocate at any moment, even though I was never stuck for more than 5 seconds. Also, it occurs to me that this many not be a thing that normal people deal with. The giant head thing runs in my family.

Hair Brushing: There is no indignity Caitlyn is less inclined to suffer through than having her hair brushed. There is running away, and crying, and repeated declarations that she doesn't want to brush her hair. And that's just when she SEES the brush. Once I actually sit her down and try to do it? Sobbing, squirming, and begging me to stop. So fucking dramatic about the hair brushing. Just as I was as a kid.

In summation, kids are fucking weirdos, and extremely dramatic. God, that is a shitty closing sentence.

Stormpacalypse

In case you guys didn't hear, it was all windy and shit this week in Jersey. And by windy, obviously I mean OMGOMGWEAREALLGONNADIIIIIIIE.

Generally speaking, I'm the person who just assumes the weather reports are an exaggeration and rolls my eyes at the people buying 20 gallons of water at the grocery store. Or, more accurately, the people I assume are at the grocery store buying 20 gallons of water because I'm definitely not at the grocery store buying anything. Do you know how crowded the grocery store is before a big storm?

Anyway. Maybe it was the fact that I have another human being to think about besides myself. Or maybe it has to do with being really and truly on my own and not having Rodolfo to depend on to think of the shit I might forget about. In any case, I decided Friday night that I should probably have some sort of non-perishable food in my house besides fun-sized 3 Musketeers and M&Ms and I went grocery shopping.

It would seem that everyone else in the tri-state area had this thought at least a few days before I did. I ended up coming home with some cookies, pre-cooked rice cups, one gallon of water, capri suns and a 12 pack of Pepsi (you know, essentials). I can't even say I worried too much about it. I was honestly more concerned about making my way to the craft store so I could finish up Caitlyn's Halloween costume.

Saturday afternoon, I did make it to AC Moore and picked up some blue duct tape and hot pink felt, like any good mom preparing for a disaster. After I got the IMPORTANT stuff, I strolled over to the candle aisle, you know, just in case, and picked up a few candles too.

As an aside right here, I think it's important to reiterate that I'm recently separated, with a halved income but just as many bills as before. Rodolfo, who makes more money than me, decided that he couldn't afford our 1-bedroom apartment when I moved out and found some random woman who was looking for a roommate, and moved in with her. He won't tell me what he's paying in rent, but I'd venture a guess at about half what I'm paying for my apartment. None of this is particularly relevant right here, but it makes this next part REALLY fucking obnoxious:

Anyway. Saturday afternoon before my trip to the craft store, Rodolfo picked up Caitlyn. He had decided to rent a hotel room, simply for the novelty of using their pool, and took Caitlyn there. Several hours later, I met him there when he wouldn't stop texting me about how cranky she was being (me: it's been 4 hours, have you fed her? him: uh, no.). I got her to eat a little bit and then she told me she had to go to pee. Except instead of pee, she had explosive diarrhea.

We (and when I say "we", I mean myself and my awesome babysitter) have been working on potty training Caitlyn. She has been doing pretty well, and she's been mostly in underwear (with just a few accidents) for the last 2 weeks or so. With explosive diarrhea added to the mix, though, I felt like I should go to the store to pick up some diapers (we won't even get into the discussion I had with Rodolfo after that, when he told me he was keeping an entire box of diapers at his house "just in case") and pedialyte. Luckily, the store had been somewhat restocked, so I was also able to get bread, chips, crackers and a few other non-perishable snacky foods too.

I spent Sunday toiling away on a Halloween costume that wouldn't even be worn (at least not on actual Halloween) and feeling pretty sure that I wouldn't have work the next day. On Monday, the storm came through. I had power most of the day, but by late afternoon, I had a few instances of losing my power, either partially or for just a few minutes at a time. Then, around 6pm, all the power went out for good.

Caitlyn had been handling the power outage remarkably well. She was fascinated by the candles I'd lit- she bounced back and forth, room to room, first repeating my warning that candles are "VERY DANGEROUS!" and then declaring how much she loved candles as she stopped at each one- "another candle in the bathroom! Another candle in the living room! ANOTHER CANDLE IN THE KITCHEN!".

Then, she very suddenly stopped running. She stood at the coffee table in our living room and declared "I pooped, mommy" and started sobbing. It wasn't just that she pooped her pants. It was that she had one of those exploding, watery poops again. And in case you don't already know this, having your mom clean diarrhea out of the folds of your lady business by candlelight is possible the most horrific, embarrassing, traumatic experience a child can ever have.

After several smelly, screeching minutes, I felt I had made my absolute best effort in cleaning her up. I no longer had hot water, so I couldn't even throw her in the bathtub. I just had to resign myself to the fact there might be some poop in her vagina. I decided that a little poop in her vagina was better than the possibility of her describing this scene to her therapist 20 years down the road if I kept trying to pry her legs apart to clean her up. Her underwear went straight to the garbage and within 5 minutes, she went back to running around declaring her love for candles. And, as luck would have it, the shit monster did not return.

After a VERY long, boring night, we packed up in the morning and headed off to Grandma's house, where there was power, hot food, and a super fun playmate for Caitlyn. I managed to convince Rodolfo to stop in and feed/walk my dog (he did so begrudgingly, and felt the need to prove that fact by sending me a picture of the dog's shit), so I was able to stay until Wednesday afternoon. It was a relief. A big part of the decision to pick up and head off to Grandma's was the fact that I had not only no signal on my cell phone, but no service on my house phone either. The stress of the "what-if" was too much with a sicky little toddler, and so we took off for the day. Caitlyn played with her cousin all day, and my mom made us a yummy dinner. It was a huge help.

Yesterday we went home, and I was really hoping I would have my power back. I did not. I totally had a bunch of dog shit on my floor though (also fun to clean up by candlelight, in case you were wondering). I fed my pets and walked my dog and cleaned up the filth and grabbed some pillows so we could crash at April's house for the night. She was the only person in the area who had any power, and she and my brother-in-law were nice enough to open their home to everyone they knew in need of a place to stay (this included myself and Caitlyn, her best friend, bestie's boyfriend and her 4 year old daughter, as well as my 13 year old nephew- with my sister, her husband and their son, that was 5 adults, 3 toddlers and 1 teenaged boy all crammed into their 2 bedroom apartment.).

Today I had to drag my ass to work, but shortly after I arrived, I got word that my power was back on. We were lucky, I know we were. There were people who lost their homes and cars and loved ones. And then there were thousands more who simply survived without power or hot food or showers. Some of them even had toddlers, I bet. As much as it was scary, and a true inconvenience, I have family and friends that I know I can always count on . Even the ones who drive me fucking insane sometimes.

On days when I'm feeling stressed or annoyed or sorry for my shitty situation, I'll think of those who were on their own. I'll try to remember that, while my situation is admittedly stressful and difficult at times, I do truly have a great support system, and unfortuantely, that isn't something everyone can say for themselves.

Anyway. I hope everyone is doing well and that no one else had a literal shit storm like I did.

Asshole, Dick, Fuck. In That Order.

Sometimes I get a little off-track with this blog. Half my posts of late have just been rants and ramblings that have absolutely nothing to do with parenting, and it seems like it's been a while since I actually wrote a post about the shit my kid is doing now. And there is so much shit she is doing now, I can hardly keep up. In fact, I wrote out a checklist of shit-she-is-doing points to hit in this post, so I don't forget anything.

Overall, I'd say the biggest change I've seen in Caitlyn over the past few months (besides, you know, the fact that she never shuts up, ever ever) is how she wants to do everything I do. I mean, obviously this isn't brand new or anything... pretty much everything babies and toddlers do is mocking on some level. The difference now is that she's not just mirroring me when I prompt her to anymore. She's started doing these things of her own accord.

The mirroring thing had hit a high point a few months ago, when she would try to do things like shave her legs in the shower when I did. That kind of mirroring is fucking adorable (you know, except for the part where she thinks she can play with my razor). Recently though, her attempts at being just like mommy have been slightly less adorable. For example, while we were on vacation, I was vacation-eating and it gave me the shits because my body had gotten used to me being pretty healthy of late. One afternoon I spent a solid 30 minutes in the bathroom with diarrhea (I know how you love these kinds of stories- you're welcome!). And in those 30 minutes, Caitlyn walked into the bathroom, oh, I don't know, let's go with 700 times. Shortly after the entire contents of my digestive tract had been forcibly removed, Caitlyn decided she wanted to use the potty.

This has actually also been a big milestone for us of late. It's certainly not consistent yet, but she pees on the potty at least once a day now. Which isn't my point at all. My point is that when Caitlyn says she needs to go potty, I immediately and enthusiastically encourage her. So was the case on the day I got the shits.

She finds it pretty novel, using the big girl toilet, so I never quite know what to expect when she says she has to go. Sometimes she pees almost immediately. Sometimes she insists on getting on and off the toilet 10 times. Sometimes she sits there for 2 seconds, declares she's "all done", then flushes the toilet 4 times. Sometimes she mostly just unravels the toilet paper. Her newest thing is the take the toilet cleaner brush out of the holder and dunk it into the toilet the moment she gets up. On that day though, her mission was clear. She was going to make fun of me. She climbed up onto the toilet (because GOD FORBID I help her up) and immediately scrunched up her face and made some fake straining noises. She then hopped right back down and said "mommy's turn!". Uncool, kid.

Since we are on the subject, though, I should say that during our vacation, and in the week since we've come home, there has been a great increase in using the potty. Two nights ago, Caitlyn peed on the potty 3 separate times. Then she pooped on there too. I've never been so excited about another person's bowel movements in my life. I'm hoping we can move on to underwear in a couple more months.

There is another area where Caitlyn is starting to hit her stride though, no longer just taking cues from mommy, but really owning it as her own. Cursing.

As you may remember, Caitlyn's first bad word was asshole. She was mistakenly under the impression that this was the dog's name, though, so I couldn't really hold it against her. After that she started saying dick. I will take 100% responsibility on that one, because it's not just that I said it to her once and she repeated it, it's the fact that after she repeated it I started laughing hysterically. And really, who wouldn't? When you are mad at your tiny 18 month old for some random act of attitude and she responds by beaming her best smile at you and confidentally, comically declaring "DICK!", well, just, how DON'T you laugh at that? You can't. It's physically impossible. I mean, you know, until the 30th time or so. Now I can actually hold a straight face long enough to tell her it isn't a nice word and that she shouldn't say it. And mostly she doesn't anymore, save for a rare occasion when she knows she's in a lot of trouble and she thinks her comic relief will save her from time outs (or beatings. I mean, probably beatings. I try to use a 70/30 beating to time out ratio).

The problem now, though, is that she isn't just using these words because she knows they will make me laugh. She's using them in context. Actually, "them" is inaccurate. "It" is more appropriate. Because there is only one bad word she regularly uses now. She doesn't use it in anger. This is not a tantrum kind of thing. She's absolutely not trying to get a reaction out of me.

The first time she said it, I hardly noticed. I sort of just glanced at Rodolfo, eyebrows raised, as if to say "did you hear that too?". He wasn't sure either, so we assumed it was some sort of toddler jibberish word that just sounded like the word we, as adults, would automatically hear. After that I started to notice a pattern though. She would always say it after some mild inconvenience. She would drop something on the floor or the dog would steal her last goldfish cracker, something like that. Nothing she would actually be that upset about. And it was always muttered under her breath. Not because she thought she might get in trouble, but because when I say it in the context she was using for it, I'd mutter it under MY breath. Then, at some point (that point being when she started lovingly embracing Swiper the Fox's catchphrase "oh, man!"), she started adding "man!" to the mix.

It went something like this: mild inconvenience, then exasperated sigh, followed by "man... fuck".

We are going to have to get that shit cleared up before she goes to Kindergarten.

I think I'll split this into two posts. More Caitlyn updates tomorrow-ish.

Badassery

There's so much going on right now. Where to start? I should probably start with the important stuff, but fuck that. Let's start with some fun shit:

Caitlyn is a bad ass. This is a known fact. Still, sometimes she surprises me with the level of badassery she exhibits. Saturday was one such day.

Rodolfo and I, in the spirit of keeping Caitlyn's life as normal as possible, have been continuing to do family outings with her. Saturday we took her to The Land of Make Believe. It was supposed to be 100 degrees out and LOMB has a water park and a regular park. Also, it's not at the fucking Jersey Shore, which means we wouldn't have to spend 4 hours sitting in traffic on the way there.

We started at the water park, and I've got to say, it was perfect for young kids. In general, it seemed like the entire park was created by someone with a gaggle of toddlers. The park was on the small side, in a good way. There was no dragging of a toddler half a mile to the next thing. There was no burning of toddler feet as we walked from the lockers where we left out flip-flops to the water. You know why? Because the water's edge was roughly 8 steps away from the lockers.

It was fantastic. There was a huge pool area that was, at its deepest, only 18 inches, so Caitlyn could walk around in it without ever being deeper than waist high. There was a pirate ship with slides coming out of every side, and a half dozen other slides spread around the kiddie pool. And at the bottom of those slides? Fucking PADDED landing platforms. Because, awesome, that's why. Then there was a bridge to cross to get to the side for bigger kids, that had a lazy river and what was essentially a huge jungle gym with water squirting out of it from every angle. We spent the majority of the day hopping back and forth between the two sections of the water park area, but eventually we moved on to the dry park.

The dry park had about a dozen or so rides, a little farm and a train ride around the park. The park is clearly meant for smaller kids, so the rides were carnival-type rides. They were smaller, so they could also be closer together, which made it easy to hop from ride to ride without anyone getting tired or cranky. And because a lot of people were still at the water park, we never waited more than 2 minutes to get on a ride. Caitlyn, naturally, wanted to ride all the rides.

We started at the carousel. She enjoyed that, as she always does. Then we went to a mini-version of the swinging pirate ship ride. You know the one I'm talking about? Anyway, this was a smaller version and the ship swung around in a circle instead of just going back and forth. I was not anticipating this ride to be scary or fast at all. That's the thing about rides though- they always feel much faster than they look! Caitlyn was sandwiched between us, but not even remotely held in by the bar across our lap- the one that was a solid 8 inches above her lap. A few seconds into this ride and I began to panic. This was not what I expected and Caitlyn was going to freak out. She was absolutely going to cry. Except she didn't. She smiled and laughed and LOVED it.

After that we jumped on a bunch of other rides. Spinning dinosaurs, flying hot-air balloons, and a tilt-a-whirl. There was even a canoe ride that she would need to ride alone. I was tentative. I wondered if she would try to stand up mid-ride and fall out. I explained to her, sort of hoping she would decide to skip it, that mommy and daddy could not ride with her. There would be no skipping of rides that day. Caitlyn went it alone. She did fantastically well and my fear of an emergency stop while she tumbled out did not even come close to happening.

Then we saw the roller coaster. Surely she was too small for it. Roller coasters ALWAYS feel faster than they look. Still, she ran into the line and we waited our turn. With every other ride, there was a minimum height for kids to ride alone, but this was the first we came across where there was an actual minimum for kids to ride at all. It was 33 inches. I quietly hoped that she was too small. A roller coaster? Really kid? This was going to end in tears, I was sure of it.

Apparently Caitlyn has had a growth spurt since her 2 year check-up. She cleared that 33 inch mark by at least an inch or two. I sat on the inside seat, since that was the side that curved in when the roller coaster went around the first sharp turn, and prepared to spend half the ride convincing my toddler that I wouldn't let her fall out. I was fully prepared for sobbing and terror. Really. Especially around that first turn. The ride started.

Caitlyn did not respond to that first turn with the fear I'd anticipated. She responded with squeals of joy. She loved it. In fact, she loved it so much that when she filed out in front of me after the ride was over, she tried to get back in to the car directly behind ours. There was a man waiting in line with his kids, his mouth agape as she tried to get back on the ride. Apparently, he couldn't believe how much my tiny little toddler obviously enjoyed herself. I don't blame him. What two year old likes fucking roller coasters?

We rode one more ride after the roller coaster, one that was right next to it, and when we finished, Caitlyn ran back over and got right back in line for the roller coaster again. Yes. She made us ride it twice.

In summation, jeez my kid is a fucking bad ass.

Also? A bad ass who has peed on the potty 3 times this week. It makes sense, I guess. Who wears a diaper on a roller coaster anyway?

This is getting a bit long, so I'll save the marital drama for another day. You're welcome.

Adventures in Shitting

I live in Northern New Jersey. It is not even remotely an exaggeration to say that I live within 10 miles of at least 4 different malls (and if we were to add another 10 miles, I could probably double the number of malls). I'm not a big fan of malls, generally, but sometimes I have to drag myself to one of them.

Any time I have to make a trip to the mall, I weigh the pros and cons and decide which one will get me in and out the fastest. When you spent 4 years of your life working in a mall, let me assure you that you don't spend a single second longer than absolutely necessary inside one of those motherfuckers. Let me break down the choices:

1. The Closest Mall: Also the rich people mall with the good movie theater that I will only go to on Sundays (when the rest of the mall is closed) because otherwise it takes half an hour to find parking. I generally avoid this mall like the plague, because I can't stand the traffic and the rich-bitch stores.

2. The Second Closest Mall: AKA the mall in the same town as the first mall, like 3 miles down the highway. A nicer mall, with less traffic, easier parking and significantly less hoodrats bussed in from the nearby ghettos. A fat girl store, which is convenient and Old Navy and Children's Place, so I can get inexpensive clothes for Caitlyn, that I will be less annoyed about when she stains them after wearing something for less than 5 minutes. Also, a little carousel that never has a line. This is my mall of preference.

3. The Third Mall in the Same Town: I'm not even kidding: This is an outlet mall with a Target attached. I only ever go here if I need something from Target, but I make an effort to steer clear of it because I don't need fucking discounted, outlet store Nikes, so it's basically a waste of my time.

4. The Mall Where I Used to Work: It's the ghetto mall of the 4, but I know the good spots to park and where all the stores are, so I never have to look for anything. There is also a Dairy (Diarrhea? What?) Queen and the place where I get my hair cut. Pretty much I go here to get my hair cut and never ever set foot in the store where I used to work, lest I have to waste 20 minutes talking to my ex-coworkers and pretending like I care about their lives.

So. I needed to go to the mall last week (At first I wrote "weekend" and then I realized that no, you literally could not pay me to go there on a Saturday). We ended up at mall #1. The snooty douche, traffic clusterfuck mall. I can't remember exactly why I chose that mall on that day, but it was, in fact, a weekday, so it was slightly less enraging than usual.

We did our shopping. I found a really cute dress to wear out for my birthday celebration this weekend. After that, we stopped by the food court and grabbed some dinner. Then I realized that Caitlyn needed a diaper change.

If there is one thing I will absolutely give this mall all the props for, it is that is has the nicest family bathroom I've ever seen. Actually, let me clarify. It's not just a bathroom. It's a family "lounge". There are curtained off areas for breastfeeding, a tv playing cartoons and toys and sinks and counter space galore. It's truly fancy. Adjacent to the family lounge is the actual family bathroom. And even that is cool. There's a regular sized toilet and a toddler sized one. They've truly thought of everything.

Anyway, Caitlyn needed a new diaper. And mommy had to take a shit. Off to the family bathroom we went! The changing tables are in the lounge area, so I decided to go to the actual bathroom first and take care of my needs first, for once. I locked the door behind me and sat down.

After a moment of trying to prematurely flush my toilet, Caitlyn noticed the little kid toilet. She's a pro at taking off her diaper anyway, so obviously she wasn't going to wait for me to be done to try this thing out. So she took off her shorts. And her diaper.

I'm wondering at this point, if I've mentioned Caitlyn's tendency to want to be completely naked while she lounges (please note that I did not say "uses") on her potty? The fact that we were in a public restroom did nothing to stop her determination to get naked for potty time. Once that diaper was off, she pulled off her shirt, then sat down on the floor next to me to pull of her shoes and socks. I mean, who PEES ON THE POTTY while wearing shoes and socks? Me, actually. I pointed this out to her while she stripped down, trying to reason with my 2 year old, who was now sitting bare-assed on the floor of a public fucking restroom. Did I mention that I was taking a shit? Yeah. There was nothing more I could do.

Just then, the door of the bathroom burst open. There I was, sitting on the toilet taking a shit, my naked kid sitting on the floor next to me, presumably contracting Public Restroom Floor Syphilis, in the fancy mall with the snooty people and the broken fucking locks. It was a middle-aged man and his probably 8ish-year-old son. Of course. Neither of them felt the need to close the door after realizing I was in there, in case you were wondering. Nothing makes a trip to the mall complete quite like having to lean over mid-dump to reclose the door of a room that smells like your ass in front of a couple of strangers who have absolutely no courtesy whatsoever.

Anyway. Caitlyn decided after that to spend 5 or so seconds sitting on the kid toilet, very blatantly NOT actually going to the bathroom, before she milled around naked while I finished my shit, and one other person (who DID close the door behind her, at least) walked in on us.

At that point, I wanted nothing more than to get some clothes on my kid and high-tail it the hell out of there. So I grabbed her, COMPLETELY NAKED, and walked into the lounge area with the necessary counter space to get her off the damn floor, trying to explain to the other families, including the second person who walked in on us, that I was not, in fact, a total weirdo who lets her kid wander around mall bathrooms naked.

I think we need to stick to the ghetto mall, where the bathrooms are just bathrooms, and no one is hanging around directly outside the door to witness your naked toddler/taking a shit shame.

Rodolfo and the Art of Vagina Maintenance

When Caitlyn first started taking off her diaper, about half the time there would be pee in the diaper and half the time she would take it off explicitly for the purpose of pissing on my floor. Then, for a long time she was taking off mostly wet diapers. And she was really on top of that. She would drop a diaper and the pee would still be hot. Then, in the last few days she has gone back to pissing on my floor again.

None of that is particularly relevant. The point is that usually when Caitlyn takes off a diaper, it is because of pee. I find it funny, how offensive she seems to find the idea of sitting in pee for even a minute, yet she will sit in a shitty diaper for as long as it takes me to notice. I mean, in all honestly that isn't usually very long. Because her shits smell like a dump truck filled with decomposing bodies. Still, when it's time to change poop, Caitlyn always tries to run away. She is one with her shitty diaper. Usually.

The other day though, she decided to take off her shitty diaper. Bare-assed Caitlyn isn't an unusual sight, so I didn't react immediately. Then the smell hit me and I realized she was walking around my living room, brushing up against my furniture and sitting on my rug all while her ass was covered in shit.

Naturally, I called for reinforcements. Rodolfo quickly grabbed her so she couldn't run away while I found the wipes. She was still in the air, squirming her way out of her dad's arms, and it was my responsibility to clean her ass. I went straight for the problem area, obviously. Because it wasn't her vagina that had shit on it.

This is when Rodolfo stopped me. He wanted to know what I was doing. "You're supposed to wipe her front to back!", he exclaimed. Wow. I very nearly screwed that one right up! It isn't as though I've always had a vagina or anything. It's a good thing I had him there to offer his expertise on vagina maintenance. Summer's Eve ass motherfucker.

I'm a lady. And I do not do the whole "front-to-back" bullshit. It seems to me this is something we tell little girls so as to delicately explain the concept that they should not smear shit into their vaginas. So I understand why my husband might think that's actually how ladies wipe. But I've got to say, in practice, I just do not have the coordination. I find myself clearing the back end first, then switching up my TP and cleaning up the front. It is just me? Am I the only fucking weirdo on the planet who doesn't do the whole front-to-back thing? Because I'm pretty sure it's a myth perpetuated by douche companies to make you feel dirty.

Divide and conquer. That's what I say.

AHHHH! AHHHH! AHHHH!

Ok. I had a post planned. It was a good one. I'll still do it, tomorrow maybe.

But there was something else. Something that eclipsed the other stuff that happened today. A milestone. A huge one.

Caitlyn used the potty for the very first time.

There was once before, when I found pee in the vicinity of her potty, like she stood next to it and peed on it like a dog. But this was different.

It started while I fed her dinner. Or, more accurately, while she fed herself dinner. Because usually she whines and fidgets instead of eating, but tonight she was happy to feed herself instead of just throwing the contents of her bowl at the dog. But halfway through dinner, I noticed she kept pulling at her diaper and had it most of the way off. She'd had the farts like whoa, so I thought maybe she finally pooped and was annoyed about sitting in it. She finished eating and I took her out of her chair, where she immediately took off her diaper, pointed to her vagina and said "pee-pee".

Game on, friends. Game fucking on.

I told her if she needed to pee she should sit on her potty and hustled her right over there. She did what she usually does and sat for 8 seconds, got up and started wandering around. Then she picked up her bowl of pasta from the table and sat back down on the potty to snack while she peed.

It was magical.

It was a little weird that she needed a snack to properly negotiate her pee, but I was extremely excited about the whole thing in general. There was clapping. And cheering and giving of cookies. Yes. Bribery is a surefire way to get this to happen again.

My only problem is, if she does start using the potty regularly...well, where the hell am I going to find underwear in her size? Tiny-assed kid still wears 18 months. I might have to take my mom's advice and shrink down some 2Ts in a load of hot laundry.

But I'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Because right now we are all very happy to embrace pissing on the toilet.

A Pot to Piss In

As I've mentioned before, we recently decided to start potty training Caitlyn. She just turned 18 months this week, so it admittedly seemed a little soon, but my personal philosophy is to do things on her timetable and not my own, and she was showing signs that she was ready.

The primary sign was when she started taking off her diaper and pissing on my rug. The dog has really been enjoying this phase because Caitlyn leaves her diapers lying around where he can get to them (like how I just blamed my toddler for the fact that I'm a slob and leave her diapers where ever she happens to take them off? Yeah. Solid Gold Parenting, right there) and he has a delicious diaper feast.

I can't say I understand the lure of a piss soaked diaper, but Joey seems to find them exceptionally delicious. The problem is, I think it's going to make his intestines explode one day.

Have you ever seen a diaper that has been ripped open? You know how the guts are all grainy and disgusting and when they get wet, they bloat up and look like flesh-gorged maggots? Yeah. Imagine that, except in the dog's shit.

The first time he shit out diaper maggots, I about had a fucking heart attack. I was convinced he had some sort of wormy parasites, which is, by the way, like my worst fucking fear. Because worms are just... ick. Fucking icky, slimy, nasty motherfuckers. But then I realized it was just from the diaper he had eaten. And then he shit 5 more times in a row, because the whole purpose of diapers is to ABSORB and so they absorbed the FUCK out of his intestinal juices, apparently, and grew to at least triple the volume of what he had actually eaten.

Lets say he eats a diaper that is mostly dry (which is usually the case, as Caitlyn has a rug to destroy). The diaper maggots are small when he eats them, but then they bloat up in his intestines and he's sliming them out of his ass for the next half hour. I'm pretty much asking for a doggie intestinal explosion, you know? It's like the dog equivalent of Pop Rocks and soda.

Wow. This post has devolved really quickly. The intent was to talk about Caitlyn's potty training progress and somehow I've written almost entirely about the dog's anus. Time to get back on track? Unless you want to hear more about diaper maggots...

Anyway. So Caitlyn and potty training. She loves her new potty. And by loves, I do not mean she loves to use it for its intended purpose. She loves to use it as a stool next to the desk, so she can reach all the things I've put up there to keep away from her. She loves to dump it over and push the button on the bottom that plays music (which is intended to be a reward for peeing in it. So much for that). She loves to pull the little bowl out and hide it under the couch. She loves to lounge on it, fully clothed or not.

What Caitlyn doesn't love to do is pee in her new potty. She seems to understand that she's supposed to sit down when I tell her to use her potty, but she usually gets bored after a minute of sitting there and so she will get up and wander around until she's ready to pee on the rug.

I haven't been particularly bothered by any of this. Caitlyn's still young, and I have a dog, so I'm used to cleaning bodily fluids off of my carpet. And I didn't expect it to be easy. I HOPED that it would be, but I knew that was a long shot. And then it happened: a breakthrough!

The other day I was in the kitchen, making dinner. Rodolfo was in the bedroom... I don't know- not watching Caitlyn? He walked back into the living room where she had been playing and I heard him ask her why she was naked. That's when he noticed it. Pee. On her potty. Please note that I did not say IN.

As I said before, Caitlyn has a tendency to take the little bowl out of her potty and hide it. She does this constantly and she hadn't actually used her potty yet, so I didn't always bother to put it back right away. Until that day when, completed unprompted, Caitlyn took off her diaper, sat down on her potty and peed ... through the hole where the bowl should have been. I always put it back right away now. But obviously she has not peed on her potty since then.

We have a few kinks to work out as far as explaining how a potty actually works and what the purpose of the potty is (not pissing on my floor. That is the purpose, kid. Get with the program) but I was so proud of my little girl. I was sobbing like a lunatic at her HUGE milestone, so she probably thinks she did something wrong and won't use the potty again till she's 9, but I still felt so happy. Even as I scrubbed the piss out of my rug.