Archives from 2002-2006

Jun

17

Poop, squawk, Q&A

No amount of cajoling, excitement-drumming, or outright bribery has made any progress in our ongoing household efforts at Operation Poop In the Potty. (I should clarify that I’m talking about getting the toddler to poop in the potty, the adults have pretty much mastered this activity and the baby is still using his free pass.) I am fairly convinced it’s never going to happen. I know people say that all kids eventually get with the pooping program but do they really? Maybe there’s a whole subset of school age children secretly sporting tween-sized diapers under their Levi’s, you know?

I’ve said for months that I don’t feel any major rush to get Riley squared away in this department but that was before he started demanding corn for dinner. Enough said? Okay then.

He’s a champion potty pee-er, though, I’ll give him that. He also loves to announce that Daddy went poop on the potty like a BIG BOY so Daddy gets a MOTORCYCLE, RIGHT MOMMY? and I tell him that Daddy is taking the reward/bribery system way too far and that Daddy may have one (1) M&M instead.

As long as I’m bagging on the children, I’d like to complain about a noise Dylan is making. We have a neighbor that has some sort of giant white parrot bird-thing whose throaty jungle cries we can hear two houses away, and Dylan’s thrilling new squawk has a similar eardrum-smashing quality. It is vowelly and undulating and frankly quite impressive, but most of all it is loud. It is so very loud. He tends to get most vocal when he’s tired and I know precisely when we’ve crossed into the Should Have Put the Baby Down Five Minutes Ago zone by the fact that the house has taken on the general relaxing atmosphere of having transported itself inside a live jet engine.

So! One of the kids needs to tone it down a few thousand decibels, the other needs to embrace the theory of crap-free pants. Other than that, they are both awesome and cute and funny and each dwelling in a particularly charming stage of childhood. I’ll keep them, I GUESS.

Lastly, a few random questions:

• Is it wimpy to choose the elliptical machine over the treadmill at the gym?
• Cute sundresses that can be worn with a matronly bra (ie, no spaghetti straps allowed): do they exist?
• What am I going to do with my Friday nights until Battlestar Galactica comes back on?
• I need to get a new exersaucer for Dylan, because we foolishly stored Riley’s old one in the garage and it became coated beyond repair with sawdust crud. Suggestions for brands that didn’t drive you batshit crazy with singing voices/seizure-triggering lights/call-and-response programming?

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