Things 2-year-olds like doing

...Sneaking off to leave a secret (and aptly named) number 2 in a potty chair*, despite months of using the adult toilet, so everyone else can be baffled for hours by the mystery stench that just won't flush away.

Now that I think about it, this is a pretty good prank, and I know I have a built-in scapegoat...

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* In our defense, it's been used mostly as a stepstool for awhile now.

Amusing searches, Vol. 1

I figured I'd start a new post department for the most amusing searches that brought people here, grouped vaguely by theme whenever possible.

All search strings are reprinted exactly as they were entered. This disclaimer frees me from my compulsion to add (sic) to the end of most of these.

• 22 year old son who is lazy -- I hate to break it to you, lady, but I'm 28 now.

• 3 year old son mean negative -- I assure you, madame (and I assure you it's a mother asking), your kid is absolutely normal. Possibly advanced, even.

• why does my toddler wipe feaces eveywhere -- Because it just feels so damn good. Before you cast the first righteous stone, have you ever, honestly, tried it for yourself?

I don't know if I should be honored or ashamed that I was the 21st hit across all of the internet for this search. It's not my highest unlikely ranking, but it's probably the most vividly disgusting one.

• i am not resposible - What a coincidence, friend! You're not the only one. Oh, while you're here, remind me to add your hometown of Frankenmuth, Michigan to my next list of cities with ridiculous names.

IL to ME Odyssey: Illinois

I figured I'd break down my observations on our car trip from Chicagoland to visit family in Northern Maine into a series of short posts of thoughts on our time in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and almost all of Maine.

For a bonus, on our way home we also added Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New Jersey.

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ILLINOIS
Distance Traveled: 30 miles
Bathroom Breaks: 3

• We started out the trip only about an hour behind a schedule we never intended to keep, but then my 5-year-old son D-, who had recently fallen at my parents' house and hit his head, said he had a headache.

Coming from a kid who is as oblivious to such concepts as can be, we figured we had to get his doctor's opinion on how we should handle this. She, of course, said we should bring him in to the emergency room to confirm he was okay.

Thankfully, they said he was fine, but this meant we were now leaving several hours behind schedule, and just in time to catch the beginning of rush hour in Chicago.

• Before we left the ER, the very nice doctor helpfully offered the kids popsicles for their trouble, which might sound wonderful until you remember we were just getting into the car. My 2-year-old daughter M-, to say nothing of her older brother, is so proficient at making messes that she has been known to somehow create a permanent stain on furniture with a single piece of popcorn placed directly in her mouth, while you stare at her chewing it.

• A combination of slow rush hour traffic and my children's desire to see me repeatedly bash my skull into unconsciousness against a car window had us stopping for a bathroom break about 10 miles from our house. Now, if you've been in gas station bathrooms before, you pretty much know what you're getting into each time, so the one side benefit is you can only be pleasantly surprised.

But this particular gas station we picked, from a choice of about 63 within a two-mile radius, happened to possess the exception to this rule. When I scouted ahead and asked the attendant about the facilities, he responded cryptically that, "it's kind of out of order... but you can use it if you don't mind."

Without having even the slightest picture in my mind of what I was agreeing to, I said that was fine, since the kids had to go and we were here. I didn't add that I absolutely had to know what he could have meant by "kind of out of order," regardless of my kids' willingness to endure it.

When I came back with the kids, he pointed me over to what (oddly) was left of the entry to a short hallway mostly blocked by a refrigerated display case, but he said we'd have to wait since someone else had just gone in.

When the man walked out a few minutes later, I didn't think he was nearly broken-up enough about the fact that, in his succinct words, "it splashed me in the face."

Given this setup, I was actually disappointed, rather than pleasantly surprised, to find that this toilet merely had no tank lid, a broken flush chain, minor staining, and absolutely no toilet paper. A roll of paper borrowed from the store shelf allowed me to impenetrably protect the kids from germs, and a simple lack of flushing avoided any unwanted toilet-water showers.

And like that, plus a few hearty foot swipes on the rug at the exit, we had notched the lowest marker on our road-trip bathroom ladder, meaning it was all looking up from there. I waved a thank you to the attendant on our way out, not envying him for the puddles he'd be standing in later when opening the enormous safe in the corner of the bathroom, and we headed back into our place in the rush hour conga line slowly carrying us out towards the open road.

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Thankfully, not every state boasted anything as traumatic as this, so you won't be getting 10 individual posts after this one. I promise.

A conversation with M-: The wipe that shakes the barley

This is the epitome of a conversation I have with M- at least once every day, proving she's definitely my kid:

Me: Hey, are you stinky?

M- (shiftily): No.

Me: I beg to differ. (as supportively as I can muster) Okay, we have to change your diaper now. (while beginning to change her) You have to tell somebody when you have to go to the bathroom, rememb...

M- (eagerly, in a Notifying Tone): I have to go to the bathroom!

Me: Yes, I know you did, that's why I'm here changing you-- you have to tell somebody BEFORE you go in your pants, so we can help you get to the toilet. And if you go in your pants by accident, you need to tell somebody that, too, so we can help get you cleaned up, right?

M- (same tone as above): I made poop in my diaper!

Me (with one final wipe): Yes. Just like that. Thanks.

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You may also enjoy the other (4 YO son) D- conversations, (2YO daughter) M- conversations, and (wife) J- conversations.

Confessions, Vol. 1

1. If only they made giant diapers that still fit snugly on a toddler, I would gladly slap one of those on M- each night and sleep like a med student through the morning, while she fed and entertained herself with the many things I'd generously leave in her crib.

2. I referred to a cartoon chipmunk in a children's television show as "kind of an a**hole" with as much forethought and seriousness as I would the friend of a friend.

3. It's hard to write amusing "confessions" after somberly reading through PostSecret for more than an hour.

4. I find it oddly freeing to stop this list at four items on a day such as this, the fifth day of the week and month.*

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* And yet, look at the time stamp.

Classic quotes, Vol. 9

Here are some of the latest quotes from around our house (M- is my 22-month-old daughter and D- is my 4-year-old son):

M- (pointedly, almost any time we ask her if she can do something): No, I'm too busy right now.*

D- (after being reminded about how M- will be 4 some day): And then we can have a FIGHT!!

M- (whenever she sees D- or I getting dressed): Bye, penis!

Me (with predictable disbelief and disgust): M-, do not eat food off the toilet seat.

M- (to my mom, uncharacteristically not doing whatever M- wanted her to at the moment): No! You make me saaad!!

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* As I had to swear to my sister, neither J- nor I have ever in our lives said this to either of our kids, though of course many times we've thought it.

Important Question: Paper, Liner, Hover, or Madness?

I'm gonna keep this simple. You may take me for the head of the new Human Un-Hygenic Activities Committee, but I promise not to judge you any more than legally required by the Common Sense and Decency Act of 1937.

I simply must hear from everyone on this important issue, particularly the ladies, who are potentially the worst offenders due to understandable volume, if no other reason...

Do you sit, or have you ever sat, directly on a public toilet seat?

Hey buddy, can I get a spot?

Don't get me wrong: I fully appreciate that as a freshly 20-month-old baby-o, M- is handling the toilet training process way ahead of her time. On paper, that is.

But my new rule is, if you're old enough to say, "Oh, thanks" like a full-grown man having his basketball bounced back over to him when I wipe your backside, you're old enough to start taking care of that business all by your lonesome.

Is that so unreasonable?

Classic quotes, Vol. 7

That's right, another list post, this one a new collection of lines uttered by this ragtag bunch of slugs:

D- (to me, from across the room): Can you throw me a pencil?

M- (after spitting): Spit-tinnn'!

Katie (in awe of the mangled English mocked at Engrish.com): Why don't they just hire English-speaking hobos and pay them in sandwiches and alcohol to fix their signs??!

Me (to J-, on the phone): Is that someone who'll wanna hear that M- just made pee in the toilet?

M- (quivering with rage while reaching for a toy in D-'s hand): I take it from you!!!

D- (standing there helplessly while trying to get dressed): Mom! She's pulling down my pants... and... now she's playing with my butt.

M- (during the above): Squishy tush!

Tinkle, tinkle, little star

In her continuing effort to become 5 years old in 2 years or less (she currently seems to be speaking and thinking at about a 3-year-old level), my 19-month-old daughter M- woke up mostly dry the other morning and immediately peed in the toilet upon waking.

Now, I don't know about you, but that first pee in the morning is generally very refreshing and primally satisfying, and given that this was her first-ever Morning Pee on a toilet, where she could hear that satisfying splashing sound instead of feeling that unnerving warmth, I expected great giddiness. However, she was mostly excited about getting "a treeeeeeeat", and this moment I captured seems to suggest that even that high wasn't made to last long:
Maybe she just knows it marks the end of an era, a glorious time of life* when you can just let loose whenever you want and know someone will clean it up for you.

Honestly, though, based on her usual morning mood, I think the look may have understandably stemmed from getting her picture taken while on the toilet (again). Still, being as angelic as she often is (I just can't bring myself to exaggerate by not including this qualifier), she couldn't hold out for long:
Full Disclosure: I had just reminded her that she could have extra treats for actually making pee, one of which is finally getting to use some of that highly-sought and entrancing toilet paper.

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* To clarify, I mean the time of life when you don't feel guilty or depressed about that habit.

A conversation with J-: The third child

Here is a revealing conversation I recently had with my wife, J-:

J- (using cartoonish parent voice): M-, did you get a treat for making pee on the toilet? Was it chocolate-covered raisins??

Me: No, just a couple chocolate chips.

J-: Then why were there chocolate-covered raisins on the kitchen floor?

Me: That was me... I had an incident.

J-: (rolls her eyes and doesn't even bother asking a follow-up question)

In my defense, she just happened to find the two I had missed picking up (and through some miracle, the kids missed eating) hiding alongside the fridge, so it's not like I just left the whole bag dumped all over the floor.

After all, they're mostly hers and I wouldn't want to call attention to how many I've eaten already.

In two places at once

That's right, I'm both here and there, guest posting today at Heavy on the Caffeine about toilet training and spousal communication. The author of that blog, Christy, has been a loyal reader for most of the time I've been blogging, so providing a guest post is certainly the least I could do to help her enjoy a well-earned vacation this week.

As a bit of a teaser, I promise you that the three people involved in the post come out seeming either stupid or undignified, so you know you'll have a good time laughing at us.

What are you doing still reading here? Go over there now!*


* Please make sure you do come back, at least occasionally, because you know my world would crumble without the praise and attention of at least one little group of people who aren't forced to put up with me, right? Okay, now you tell me, "Buck up, Sport," and reassure me you'll always be back... aaaaand Action!

The secret life of pee-pees

This is a little window into what we're dealing with these days now that D- is really feeling his four-ness:

D- (laying down, shortly after waking up, on the opposite side of our L-shaped couch from where I was laying): Daddy, can you make me something to eat? I'm hungry.

Me: You know what you gotta do first? Go to the bathroom.

D-: But you didn't see me grab my penis...

Just as I was about to say, "You don't need to grab your penis before you know you have to go to the bathroom," he continued.

D-: ...M- was in the way! (she was standing at the coffee table between us)

So what had promised to be the beginning of another theoretical discussion about when one needs to sit down and try to use the toilet, changed instead into a very practical expression of confusion regarding what seemed to be my x-ray vision.

Times like these make me wonder how the first man toilet trained himself before it stopped being widely accepted for men to be covered in their own urine? Because all indicators I've seen point to us not much caring either way without repeated, or possibly continuous, intervention.

The answer, I suspect, lies somewhere with the existence and manipulative skill of women. So thanks for that (I guess), ladies!

That's no moon

The caring folks at Angel Soft would love for you to smile and sigh when you see this scene, rather than get your stranglin' gloves broken in, as you should:
I don't know about you, but in my house, this kind of frivolous waste would mean that toilet paper would come in homemade 5-sheet rolls, not ones long enough for a puppy to frolic across your house with.*

And I'd still watch them like a hawk.

That's with good reason-- D- has lately shown every intention of making sure I have to. After being really good with everything to do with the toilet, he's taken up the new hobby of creating a hand-crafted softball each time he needs to dab himself clean.

Let me first assure you, we aren't dealing with the cheap stuff-- this is primo extra-thick Charmin bought in a package the size of a Yaris at Costco. That makes it pretty affordable for J- to pamper herself and for me to get by with about half a square each time, but it still ain't free, and regardless, I'd like him to not grow up to be as wasteful as Americans have been conditioned to be for decades now.

We had inklings of the problem in the past few weeks when: J- found an unflushed toilet more full of TP than of water; we marveled at how often we were putting out new rolls; and when I (from the shower...) heard the toilet choking and sputtering just with the effort to swallow what D- understatedly identified as "my pee-pee".

Now, I'll acknowledge that he might come by this proclivity quite honestly, as I've always (lovingly, of course) mocked J- for believing she needs to mummify her hand in order to be clean, but I doubt this is a genetically inherited trait, so hopefully it's just a phase for him. We had a little talk about it, I made some threats, and I thought we moved on.

Then yesterday, I found what at first looked like a particularly swollen disposable diaper sitting on the bathroom floor.** Upon closer inspection, it was virgin toilet paper crumpled into a ball so dense that the sheer weight of it must have made D- struggle to wield it while on the toilet earlier that afternoon. Once it rolled boulder-like away from him, he was surely forced to make a second one***, possibly even a bigger one, cause that's just how men think.

After calling him in for another interrogation, we had a second talk, of course referencing the first, more threats, and what I felt to be a rational and productive Q&A comparing the relative size of his wee-wee and its microscopic leftover drop to the overstuffed bean bag chair that is his apparently typical wiping utensil. That hopefully has now done the trick.

Meanwhile, all three of us (soon to be a fourth, please God) have only just this afternoon finished going through Ball #1 from that single bathroom trip 24 hours earlier.


* How many other industries make a habit of encouraging waste and misuse of their products? What would people say to an Ikea ad showing a 5-year-old cutely taking a claw hammer to a bookcase while the mom shakes her head and smiles, and the announcer says, "Time to go back to Ikea!"^

** It's a testament to how plush this paper is that even in holding and staring at it up close, with that amount of it all balled up, I couldn't immediately be sure it wasn't a diaper, or possibly some kind of rag.

*** Just the thought of this sends a shiver up my spine, headed to wherever in my brain my compulsion to avoid waste in all its forms resides, so I need to find a way to repress these visions of disproportionate environmental damage.

^ That's not to imply I wouldn't like to watch someone else's 5-year-old take the hammer to that someone else's bookcase... maybe it'd be okay if it was already irreparably broken...

Household occurrences likely to revisit me in nightmares

Here are several events at our house, most from this morning alone, that I believe I'll be seeing replayed in some form in the coming nights whenever I manage some sleep:

1. M- firmly poking the bottom of an open box of cereal on the table and me lunging forward to catch it just before it turned upside down. I haven't always been so lucky. (In my nightmares, I'm sure the box will always be just out of my reach.)

2. D- standing on the rug between the dining room and kitchen saying, "I'm having an accident!"

3. M- streaking through the dining room with a Spider-Man fork stolen from the dishwasher.

4. M- climbing all over me like a boa constrictor, onto and off of the chair, moaning, "No, no, no, noooooo!" over and over again for no apparent reason other than sniffles and crankiness (it was before 8).

5. D- holding a ball and taking aim at my happy place while I demonstrate how to stand upon the parallel bars at the park. (Luckily it was only a Nerf ball so it didn't hurt, but still I saw the look in his eye-- it was a vicious one expectant of painful hilarity.)

6. M- taunting D- by walking across the family room with his Corduroy bear and, instead of giving it back as originally ordered, slapping him twice across the face with it (like Monty Python's Fish Slapping Dance) and running back away.

7. Driving off a giant mushroom and falling into a bottomless pit, like I did a couple times last night in MarioKart Wii. (In my nightmares, I'm sure the magic man on the cloud will never come to save me.)

8. M- splashing her hands in the toilet saying, "Pee-pee, pee-PEEEE!" (we've gotten thisclose to it several times now), before bidding it bye-bye while waving as she has been doing for the past few weeks.

9. Closing a fresh, clean diaper, standing up and turning around, and then detecting a dreadful hint of baby byproducts. Yes, M- tends to be picky where she defecates, but then so do some adults.

10. A massacre by a rampaging spoon-spork hybrid. Okay, I only read about it, but I have a very impressionable brain, and things like that tend to stick. At least it's better than a velociraptor attack.

Things that should revisit me in my dreams:

1. M- comforting a crying D- by saying, "eye-ing", offering a kiss and hug, and then sitting down to let him read her the book (Good Night, Maine) they had been fighting over earlier.

Feeling her oats

Let me begin with the bright side: I have a great story for M-'s prom date.

I do forewarn you, this story is not for those who enjoy a nice warm cappuccino or bowl of applesauce as a mid-morning treat.

This morning, M- developed a pretty bad case of diarrhea. After hearing the horrible, though familiar, herald of a long day of diaper cream and Pedialyte and looking down to see her squatting on the kitchen floor, I decided to grab hold of the silver lining and hang on for dear life. I pointed out to her that she just (picture a really gentle, happy, and encouraging voice, smiling to mask the pain in my nose) "made poop in [her] diaper!"

For those of you without children, this helps build her awareness of her bodily functions and prepare her for the upcoming process of learning to leave Daddy alone and take care of such things all by herself.

Being the fast learner that she is (see this post on her vocabulary), I think she's already got it down pat. For diapers 3 through 5, she paused in her wanderings about the house, tooted her own horn, and said very happily, "Poot. Poot!!" Then she laughed a lot.

This is probably partially due to her consistent pleasure at knowing things and communicating them, but I think it's mostly due to her genes gently informing her that bodily functions are as hilarious as they are useful. I wish I could argue with her, as much as I wish the torture would end.

Thar's GOLD in thut thar water!

Let me begin by stating for the record that M- has a problem confusing her tub seat with the toilet (which she has yet to begin using, ahem... so much for her being extremely advanced). For more information, see item #6 in my 10 reasons my 3-year-old son may NOT be homosexual post, and also possibly another post I can't remember and am too lazy to find.

Suffice to say, that post would mention that she opens (at the very least) each bath and shower by wetting herself, whether or not she just took off a fully loaded diaper. As yet another side note, this surprises D- every single time, judging by his tone as he calls out, "Her peed!!"

Anyway, the other day M- was apparently overcome with thirst only once I started getting her clothes off for shower time, because she had just turned down a cup of milk not 5 minutes earlier. I'll stop here for a moment in case you're considering stopping here yourself, and let me reassure you it doesn't get as bad as it sounds it might.

She sat in her tub seat (as a $1 thrift-store find of Katie's, it's in a lower weight class of the same league as my dishwasher), lunging towards the falling water with a bath-toy cup, desperately trying to catch a few drops of that precious first water out of the shower, which as we all know is generally of a temperature just slightly warmer than Absolute Zero.

After middling success in this endeavor, she noticed a much more appealing alternative: the alluring golden mead that had started pooling in her seat. Now, this is a kid who loves new and exotic things as well as watered-down juice, so I think she saw in this a Venn Diagram of ecstasy. She pointed and pulled out most of her beverage-based repertoire, calling, "Joo! Joooo! (juice) Tir-tee! (thirsty) 'Wink! 'Wink! (drink)" as she tried to think of a way to get this newest flavor of Kool-Aid into her mouth.

Suddenly, Daddy found much more success than M- had in getting that shower water down to the baby, and just like that, the magic elixir of the gods vanished as quickly as it came. Much like leprechauns do. Maybe they brought it? The world may never know.

The peeing is the hardest part

D- has this inexplicable habit of either asking for permission before going to the bathroom or making an announcement requiring some kind of vocal acknowledgment before he will go.

Each time, the sarcasm demon that lives inside me tempts me to snidely say, "No, I'm afraid you can't go-- I'd much rather you stand right here till you pee on my floor. In fact, why not go sit on the couch?"

If only he wouldn't take me at my word, I just might.

To keep it all in perspective, though, I'm still over the moon about his being able to go to the bathroom by himself, so I try not to look a gift horse in the... mouth. Changing M-'s "tcinky, tcinky" diapers keeps me centered.

She better believe she's on deck for The Knowledge very soon. Hopefully her apparent desire to emulate everything D- does works to our advantage in this area. She could do much worse for a role model.

I like me a self-serve baby

As M- gets older, I'm taken back to the glorious days before I was able to take for granted how many things D- could do for himself. Each day I was amazed by some new thing he mastered. You see, as a parent, and as a human, my goal in all areas is to be as lazy as legally allowed, and this stretch of self-sufficiency for the kiddos is a big part of that effort.

Of course, I will never take for granted that D- can use the toilet completely by himself (and it is absolutely still the high point of this cycle), but all the other little things just kind of fade into distant memories as you take on new challenges. You can never be fully prepared for all the little things you have to do for a baby (including pre-chewing their food, for some-- thankfully that's not so common in this country...), and when you're hit with all of them at once, they just kind of blur together. Once the kid grows up, those little things all disappear together and you get spoiled. This is how people end up with more than one child.

Granted, that helpless baby phase does not end all at once, but in some children, it certainly seems to. For example, as I discussed yesterday, M- has suddenly burst forward in her speaking abilities, and she seems in it to win it. Similarly, back in December, before she was 1, she just began walking outright all of a sudden after a select few test steps in the week or so before that. There was no middle ground, no real learning phase. And around the same time, she popped out one, two, four, then six teeth total, all in the span of a week or two.

I really can't fully describe all the things she can do and understand versus a month ago, but I think I can pretty much sum it up in one anecdote:

Through much of her first year, M- had to be held while sleeping, or she would wake up and scream, and almost literally never sleep. This was not for lack of trying on J-'s and my part-- I think you all must realize by now that I can be a "terrible father" with the best of them. I mean, God made earplugs for a few reasons, and one of those was to show your children you really, really aren't listening and they just have to deal with whatever they're screaming about.

Now, M-'s a cosmopolitan baby that will sleep anywhere you lay her down (at the right time, of course) and when she wakes up, she merely calls patiently for her entertainment committee (D-) to dance a jig in front of her crib till Daddy comes to get her. But what's more, now that she has harnessed the power of speech, at exactly 10:40 this morning, she put down her toy, looked up at me, and said "nigh-nighhhhh" several times until I picked her up and confirmed the message was received. Nap 1 went down like clockwork, then she did the same thing again about 2 hours later.

"And I think to myself, what a wonderful world."