Ah, potty training.
The best part of motherhood.
After two girls, the pediatrician casually mentioned that I should
consider waiting until he is 3. This, of course, did not need to be said,
because he is my third child. And
although I have tried to deny every interest he has shown in the toilet, the
time has come where he is going once or twice a day of his own accord. And so I
took the easy road and let him potty train himself. Or so I thought.
Yesterday was a beautiful day outside. Inside it was just the opposite. I have four
small children so you can imagine the state of my house (and I will leave it to
your imagination and admit nothing), and we all had attitudes to match. I threw
in the towel mid-morning and put them down for early naps. Of course, Katie read books in her room for,
oh, at least five minutes. Chase nearly put
in a full nap, while Miles cut his short.
It was just enough time to throw dinner in the crock pot and gear myself
up for the second half of the day. So I fed them again (what else can you do
besides try to make them sleep and force feed them when they are grouchy?!),
and dragged them to the park.
We had a great time with our neighborhood friends, and the older kids joined us after school. In fact, we stayed at the park for several hours. But I did not write this post to brag about my chore-avoidance techniques. I wrote it to display my amazing detective reasoning skills, which are nothing (but) short of amazing.
My first clue should have been the first time I picked up Chase
and he left a wet spot on me. It was really only damp so I just let it go. My
second clue should have been the second time I picked up Chase and he left
another wet spot. The third clue should have been the third time … okay; I
think it’s safe to say you get my point.
But I had put a new diaper on him right before we came to the park and
he really hadn’t been drinking much, so there was no way his diaper was
leaking. As we were leaving the park he
left another damp spot, so I just assumed he’d sat in a puddle and his fleece
pants had absorbed the muck. It’s always
better to assume you’re covered in park sewage than your own child’s
urine.
We got home and put dinner on the table just in time for
Vance to get home and enjoy a nice evening meal with us. During dinner I picked up Chase for reasons
which escape me now (it has been nearly a full day since then; you can’t expect
me to remember all the details), but
were probably related to putting him back in his chair so he could actually eat
dinner, and he left an extremely wet spot on my shirt. This time I did what all good moms would do
after realizing there aren’t any puddles in the house he could have sat in; I
smelled my shirt. Yep. It was definitely
urine. Of course Vance assumed the
diaper was leaking and I assured him that was impossible, even though there was
no other logical explanation. Because
I’m rational like that. But the
detective in me realized something just wasn’t adding up.
After dinner I proceeded to get Miles ready for bed. As I was busily surfing the internet blocking
the doorway so the newly diapered and pajama-ed baby couldn’t escape, Katie
came up the stairs proclaiming that I had to see the disgusting thing that
Chase had done. She was in total
disbelief as she repeated over and over “you have to see this!” while never giving any clues to what was going
on. As I made my way downstairs, Vance
made his way up with a child whose hands were covered in brown stuff. He ruined Katie’s carefully constructed
suspense by proclaiming that Chase had decided to play in his diaper. Although
the evidence was right there in front of me, I still couldn’t quite believe
it. If it were Katie there would be no
question. But this was not really in
line with Chase’s typical behavior.
Regardless, there was a mess to clean up. I will spare you most of the
details, except one because it is too important to omit. As I went to remove his pants, I discovered
that he either lifted a large portion of fecal matter out of the diaper and
into his pants, or the diaper had leaked.
But then I saw the underwear. And suddenly everything made sense.
I was right! His
diaper was NOT leaking, and he had NOT stuck his hand in his own feces. Flashback to after naps: Chase had successfully used the
bathroom. I made the executive decision
that his old diaper was wet enough to warrant a new one in light of our plans
to spend the (entire) afternoon at the park.
To save time, I pulled up the underwear he’d been wearing over his
diaper, along with his pants, so he could finish eating while I ran upstairs to
get a diaper. Somewhere along the way I must have gotten
distracted. I know this because of all
the things I cleaned up last night, one of those was NOT a diaper. But hey.
At least I saved $0.15. So if your child wants to potty train himself, even
though it sounds so easy, such efforts should continually be denied at least
until you can remember what you did 30 seconds ago. Or until he is 3.
