Potty Woes

The Mimzy growing up way too fast...

We have all gone through it. Those of us with kids. The inevitable, the ugly....Potty Training. Now maybe some of you out there do not view potty training with the disdain that I do. Maybe some of you out there say "Hey, my kid was a breeze. He/She practically tranined themselves". Well I say bravo and lucky you, you must be the most fantastic parent on earth......Sorry about that. This has nothing to do with you and I should not take it out on you. Especially when I know that the potty training issues we face are mostly do to us. But the fact is that we had issues with The Creep and the fact is that The Mimzy is 3-1/2 and I would say that she is in the middle of potty training. She probably would have been ready a year ago but truth be told I just was not looking forward to the daunting task and the work it involved. It was so much easier to simply change the pull-up and get on with our day. To potty train would take some solid continuous effort and it just seemed so exhausting. Not to mention that a year ago we were in the midst of uprooting our family and relocating. I told myself that it was traumatizing enough making the move and that we should not rock the boat this is also why The Mimzy still uses.......a pacifier. Shhhhhhhhhhhhh.......please don't tell anyone. I know I know, I hear all of the groans out there...but let's get back to the subject at hand. You can reprimand me for the pacifier another time.

So....back to potty training. Coach (aka, my husband and partner in crime Todd) and I decided that she was ready and that we she start making the effort of helping our daughter transition into this new phase. We bought some adorable panties featuring Dora, Kai-Lan and Spongebob. We bought loads of stickers for incentives along with an adorable book for her to put the stickers in. We also loaded up on dum dums. We thought this would go smoothly. She was ready, she had all of the signs that she was ready. What I did not anticipate was that damned thing called Free Will. What do you do when your child decides to exert her power over her own body at 3-1/2? We would sit her on the potty endless times with no result only for her to "go" when we took her off. We had her telling us that she did not want panties, she wanted a diapy. It seemed as though she would never decide to use the potty. But Coach was persistent with her and eventually and slowly gained a few small victories with her. However these all involved him placing her on the potty and not yet telling us that she needed to go potty. Then one day Coach said enough was enough and that there would be no more diapy's during the day. To my surprise it seems to be working. We still need to ask her if she needs to go potty but she is able to recognize when she does. The past few days she has even begun to show signs of needing to go by doing the pee-pee dance and leg crossing. So all in all we are making progress. Until.....until we discuss the "dirty" aspect of potty training. The ever dreaded POO! Don't look away. You know what I am referring to and you can bet your arses that we will talk about it. I had what is close to a breakdown this afternoon regarding the poo. I left work, went grocery shopping, came home and put the groceries away, got dinner going and took The Mimzy up to the Potty. She went and I asked her...."Do you need to go Poopy"? "No mommy, I just pee. I all done". Okay, she is sure she is all done. So what do I hear 15 minutes later? "Mommy? I poop!" NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!! That was it. I was ready to lose my mind. This happened twice last night and many times before. Why oh why is she torturing me? Doesn't she understand how messy this is? Ewe. Gross. I donned my purple rubber gloves and got to the task of wiping the butt and cleansing the panties.

So why is she torturing me so? Why does she keep doing this? Does she know how much it frustrates me? Is she getting back at me for not allowing those extra Oreos? What is going on?

The truth is she is 3-1/2. She is a beautiful baby girl who is still trying to learn the signals of her body and to recognize them in time to react. She is not doing this to be mean or spiteful. She is not doing this on purpose at all. She is not trying to push my buttons for her amusement. All she wants to do is please me. What she is trying to do is her best and what I must realize is that when you break it down this is really not that important. She will learn to use the potty for better or worse, for pee or for poo, when she is ready. My question to myself is "Why rush it"? She will be rushed and pushed into so many things throughout the rest of her life before she is ready to face them. Shouldn't we allow as many changes and experiences as possible to be a natural progression?

Cheers.

Meet Mimzy & The Creep

Here they are...Mimzy & The Creep. As you can probably guess this is where the title for this blog came from. From the absolutley odd nick names that have been graced upon our children. Mimzy is also known as Mia and The Creep, well that is Chase. It got me thinking about nicknames and their develoment and origins. It is as if they are a life force all of their own. They grown and develop into complex creatures that require a flow chart in order to determine how they were born. What I wonder most about is why we sometimes apply such horrifc terms of endearments for our loved ones. For instance, I was working in the garden yesterday afternoon and our neighborhood had some company over and the guest addressed her child (about 20 times in 2 minutes) as Pooper. Pooper? Really? Now I should not talk. I call my son Creep for goodness sake. I can tell you the development and origin of how the name came to be but does that matter? I have labeled my son as a Creep. I try to refrain from addressing him as such while in front of friends but it could slip out eventually and what happens that day when a friend of his latch's onto that nickname and my son is forever known throughout his entire K-12 career as a Creep? Will I have scarred him for life? Will I cause permanent damage? Will I be obligated to pay his therapy bills when he is a traumatized adult?

Then there is my daugther Mia. Mimzy, MiMi, Linners, Mimi Loohoo, Lulu, Lulah, Lulahbug, Mia Lin Assabaggers.....the list is endless. Am I cursing her with a personality complex in her adult years with which she assigns a distinct personality to each of the names just so she can tell each apart from the other? Again, am I scarring her for life? Will she end up as another Sybil using her creative mind to develop an alternate world that is crazy and interesting enough to write a book about and get turned into several movies? (That's actually not a bad idea).

The point is...why do we do this to our children and our Spouses? To our parents and our siblings? The answer is simple. Love. It is out of love that we label those around us with these oddities. It is giving our seal of approval and putting our own personal stamps on the relationships. They are in fact Terms of Endearment. So the next time you hear a person calling their child Pooper or Booger or Creep think twice before judging because you are witnessing love first hand and that is a special thing my friend.

Yes, I am blogging.

I’m feeling a bit radical right now. So what do I do with the radness? I decide to start blogging. Yes you can giggle….ok laugh if you must…..ok, that’s enough. Is it really that funny? Of course it is because I am by no means a writer. Even in an alternate universe where I am the most talented woman in existence writing would not be at the top of the list. My husband, he is the writer. He is the one with the gift of words, with the witty remarks and the insightfulness. Me? I just think about the things that I want to say, the things that I want to convey but I never actually do because the words get stuck and I just end up babbling incessantly and talking in circles until even I am confused and have no idea what the original topic of conversation was.  See, I’m doing it now. Where were we? Let me re-read what I wrote so that I know where I was going….Ah yes, blogging.

So here is the thing. I was getting updated on my 20/20 episodes the other day and saw a story on a woman who happens to be a mommy blogger http://www.nieniedialogues.blogspot.com/ who I found to be incredibly inspirational and courageous. So I started checking out her blog which lead to checking out other mommy blogs and realized that this is a much more in depth way of keeping in touch with family and friends and with making new friends then forums such as Facebook, which has by the way become utterly boring and full of minute by minute complaints and boring updates. Harsh words but true. I want to know more about people and their lives. I want to know the fun and beauty of their families along with those times that they want to rip their hair out or wish for a mute button for their children (don’t deny you have this thought on daily basis). Why do I want to know all of this? Because I am a mom. Because I am going through the same thing and because life is so busy it is nearly impossible to make time for a girls night out or to even maintain relationships to have a girls night out. Or if you are like me you feel guilty having a girls night out because you are gone working in an office 10 hours a day away from your family and feel that every other moment should be spent with your family. It is a seriously brutal circle.

So here I am…trying my hand at blogging. I give myself two goals with this new endeavor. To try to write at least once a week and to try to keep it up for two months. As my husband likes to say “Hold onto your butts!” This is gonna be a bumpy ride.