Mark of Fridays: Reading room



 

Like father, like son.

There's one other great thing about learning to use the potty: more time to get some serious reading done.

Captain Underpants

So, we've been working on potty training in our house since Lynne got out of school for the summer. As it turns out, we have to our advantage that Mark really likes underpants.  He gets really excited whenever he gets to pick a new pair.

The problem is that... well, Mark really likes underpants. He figured out pretty quickly that if he pees in his underpants, he gets to pick out a new pair.  And we're not talking about a little bit of pee.  We'd turn around to find him standing in a pee puddle 4 feet in diameter.

So we tried some other incentives/penalties: 

1.  If you tinkle in your underpants, you don't get to pick out new underpants until tomorrow and we'll wear a diaper for the rest of the day.  Mark's response:  It's OK, I got tired of using the potty today anyway.

2.  We'll give you an M&M every time you make a tinkle in the potty.  Mark's response, after the first 2 M&Ms:  No thank you, I don't want any more M&Ms.

Then Matt had a genius idea.  He tried:  Mark, if you make it all the way until bedtime with dry underpants, I will give you your very own baseball card.  We can make a special box for you, and you can put a card in there for every day you keep your underpants dry.

As it turns out, Mark likes baseball cards even more than he likes underpants.  It was like flipping a switch. 

So far, he's made it 6 days without any accidents.  He's been to the Children's Museum and Brookfield Zoo in his underpants,  both without incident (other than visiting the bathroom roughly 400 times).  He's made several long drives in the car without soaking the seat.  We haven't gotten rid of the diapers at bedtime yet, but so far he's telling us (with approximately 2 minutes warning) before he has a potty emergency.  Pretty good, we think.

Matt says this experience should teach us all how valuable baseball cards really are.  To that Lynne adds:  to little boys. 

Quotation Mark Mondays: Waiting

In a booth at Connie's Pizza.

Waitress (to Mark): Are you ready for some pizza?
Mark: Not until I'm done pooping. I'm making a poop right now!

Quotation Mark Mondays: Bathroom humor

"I made a poo that looks like a banana!"


Mark: "I don't have any tinkle. You'll have to buy me some tinkle."
Matt: "Mark, nobody sells tinkle."
Mark: "Yes, you can buy tinkle. You go to a store that only sells tinkle and you buy some."

(We're working on potty training so there's a lot of this talk in our house.)

Greetings from Poo Land

From: Matt
Sent: Wednesday, February 29, 2012 11:07 AM
To: Lynne

Greetings from Poo Land.
In case your mom asks why I was a bit disoriented, disorganized this morning....

Even before I got to the door, I knew there was going to be a situation. That certain nose-burning odor was already obvious from the hallway. I steeled myself a bit and tried to remember if we had enough wipes in there. I was discouraged, but not overwhelmed; I'd handled the Door Penetrating Poos before.
When I opened the door, the smell was worse than I had imagined. A thousand rotting potatoes? Ten dead skunks? I don't know the proper metaphor here. It was bad. Twenty years from now when he's graduating college, I will still be able to recall this distinct odor.
There was Mark sitting his bed, smiling.
"I make a poo, daddy!"
Indeed.
There was what can only be described as a "significant amount" of poo on his pillow and blanket. (Significant: distinctly more than a spot, less than substantial.)
"I make a poo daddy and Grover jump out of the bed!"
Grover was, in fact, on the ground. He probably threw himself overboard. Every monster for himself in these situations.
I grabbed the pillow out of the bed right away. Of course, Mark started crying, apparently unaware of the gravity of the situation.
"Don't throw away my pillow, daddy! Don't throw away my pillow!"
I reassured him that the pillow would be safe. Add it to the yes-those-are-orange-french-fries and dad's-going-to-take-nap-too lies that I said I'd never tell.
Next, I snatched Mark out of bed. He seemed oblivious to the smell which was now clinging to me like a spider web. I think my nose will need therapy.
It was clear this was an immediate bath situation. I peeled his shirt off without causing further damage. Oddly, his pants were completely clean. Not a spot on them. The poo must have rocketed out at such a speed and force that it bypassed the pants. I can't explain that part of the story. Maybe the pants were spared so they could go on to some greater destiny. I burned them anyways.
Anyhow, Mark was excited by the prospect of a morning bath and I think he believes we're going to do this every Wednesday. I hope that is not the case.
While I filled the bathtub, I tried to use the hand wipes to get the poop off his back, etc. None of this seemed to phase him. When I finally got the diaper off, I think it weighed three pounds. No joke. No wonder he was happy. He probably felt relieved.
Anyhow, we got in the bath. Of course, he didn't want to get out very soon which I approved of. As he played a little, I kept trying to find bags to wrap the diaper in layer after layer of plastic. I sent it to the hallway, but it was not far enough away.
When we were done with the bath, it was time to get dressed. As he got ready, I surveyed the damage. Mark reminded me again not to throw away his pillow. I told him that I wasn't going to throw it away, but it needed to be cleaned because it had poopy on it. I told him that a lot of things needed to be cleaned because there was a lot of poopy on a lot of things. I told him that he was a good boy and he did a good job telling me about the poopy when I came in, but we needed to clean a lot of things.
"You don't need to clean the closet, daddy. There's no poopy on the closet doors, Daddy."
I conceded that that he had not gotten poopy on the closet doors on the other side of the room. Somehow that perspective actually made me feel a little better.
Anyhow, I sent him off with your mom and he was as happy as ever, pretending to make Elmo yell "I'm rojo! I'm rojo!" as he got in the car. I took some solace knowing Elmo had come out of this experience unscathed, both emotionally and poo-wise.
I think I used half our wipes scraping poop off blankets, pillow, sheets. I kept telling myself that someone did this for me once, someone did this for me once, someone did this for me once. It actually helped during the roughest patches. (Windows were open, obviously.)
So I was late for work and the blanket is washed. (Yes, I washed it on cold and I put the spray on first.) I'm not confident it can be saved, but that may be the nose trauma talking. It looked ok. I threw in the sheets, pillow cases and clothes (his and mine). I put in the pear soaked clothes from yesterday, too.
I really should have filmed the whole thing as a teen sex ed video. Hey, teens: having kids is a life affirming and amazing experience. You will learn things about life and yourself that you never imagined.
But unless you are ready to spend a morning scraping poo off a pillow and blanket by hand, then you should probably hold off.

Mark of Fridays: The greatest gift of all

So, it has come to Lynne and Matt's attention that it is time for Mark to start trying to use the potty. Easier said than done.

But, as part of a brilliant plot to convince Mark that potties are cool, Santa brought Mark a potty for Christmas this year. It's hard to say exactly what Santa was thinking, but probably something: "I'll bet when Mark opens this, he'll be really excited about potties and think sitting on the potty is awesome!"

So, Christmas morning, Mark opens the Elmo potty box.

"Take it out! Take it out!" he squeals.
Lynne takes the potty out of the box to show Mark. Mark promptly pulls down his pants in the middle of the living room and sits on the potty. Ahhh, Christmas memories.

Post script: Santa also brought Mark a set of stamps. Every time he uses the potty, he can get a stamp on his hand. The good news is that Mark does indeed like the potty stamps. The bad news is that Mark makes Lynne and Matt get one if they go to the bathroom. So now you know.