mommyhood, tantrums

Whatever

WFAM

The boys woke up in good moods. This always helps on a Monday. I corralled them into our bathroom, grabbed their clothes and started to help little T.Puzzle undo the snap and zipper of his pjs.

“No!” he screams. “I do it myself!”

Soon he realizes he doesn’t have the dexterity to open the closure.

“I need help!” he recants.

I reach for the flap of fabric, pop it open and start to unzip him.

“No! I do it myself!”

Whatever.

T.Puzzle also got angry at me at breakfast. I attempted to pull apart his mini waffles, like I do every morning, and he couldn’t believe I would have the audacity to do so.

Whatvever.

A three year old is a lot like a moody, teenage girl. How do I know this? I used to be one. Payback is, well, you know…

That is until he takes two of his mini waffles and fashions them into a toilet seat. I can honestly say, I have never done that. Not once in my former teenaged life or in my current situation.

At least I found it mildly humorous. Of course, I didn’t let little T.Puzzle know that. He would have somehow managed to use this information against me.

kids, mommyhood

Huh?

WFAM

I was in the truck with Full Speed while Mad Dog ran into Office Max with little T.Puzzle. To pass the time, Full Speed  and I played some games. First, we had to look around us and find patterns and then we took a word and tried to rhyme it as many times as possible. The rhyming was going great. Full Speed shouts out, “Frog!”

I came up with, “Fog!”

In response I was expecting him to say log or dog. Instead he says, “Shmerce!” (rhymes with purse)

Huh?

“What’s a ‘shmerce’?” I ask.

Without missing a beat he says, “It’s a kind of smoothie.”

It doesn’t even matter to him that the imaginary word schmerce is no where close to rhyming with fog either. I know oftentimes I am living in an alternate universe from Mad Dog, now I realize, my world is completely different from Full Speed’s, too.

What can I say? It’s a dog eat dog out there. Or as Full Speed would say, ‘ shmerce eat shmerce’.

bad day, mommyhood, potty training

Under Fire

WFAM

My day was bad. T.Puzzle was oh-so-defiant from the moment his feet hit the ground in the morning. This got old. Fast.

I continued to attempt to potty-train him. He has mastered peeing on the potty. He still will not poop on the potty. Fifty-percent just isn’t cutting it.

You may wonder why it is not. How about the twenty-seven loads of poop related laundry I’ve done in the past seven days for starters? Or, maybe the crying, the tears and anguish (I’m talking about me, now) that poop-smeared socks have caused.

I spent a good portion of my morning with T.Puzzle screaming and crying while sitting on the potty. After about an hour of this, I gave up. I took off his pants and decided to let it go. It is becoming too much of a struggle and we both are miserable. I hoped he would give some sort of signal that he was about to poop since he had no pants. He did not.

He pooped all over the floor.

I’m giving it one more chance. The next time he poops anywhere but a potty, we are going back to pull-ups.

Everyone has their two cents. Everyone has what worked for them. Everyone apparently has children who were miraculously potty-trained in two days.

I don’t want advice. I want help cleaning up all the mess that potty-training leaves behind.

I was so frustrated I had to put him to bed for a nap (he quickly fell asleep) and go sit out on the lanai. I felt so angry. I can’t believe history is repeating. Here I am, a perfectly nice lady, stuck with kid number two who refuses to do a number two. He most likely will be nearing four years old before he decides it’s time. Exactly like his brother before him. Ugh!!!

I called Mad Dog at work and let loose a tirade of frustration. He listened patiently and said, “You’ll break this one, too. You broke the first two (meaning himself and Full Speed), you can do it again.”

Until that happens, I have to let certain things go (like potty-training) and muster the strength to continue to battle it out with T.Puzzle (and keep Full Speed in check, too). Raising two boys is not a walk in the park. It’s more like a full-on sprint while dodging heavy, artillery fire (and poop, too!).

children, rock and a hard place

NoBunny’s Fault but My Own

WFAM

Sometimes because my boys don’t have the sharpest vision, they’ll imagine they see things and I go along with it. They might imagine seeing a plane in the sky or an animal that isn’t there. That’s why whenever we drive a certain stretch of highway and little T.Puzzle says he sees ‘bunnies!’ when there are clearly none, I don’t get too concerned.

I had a lightbulb moment today. As we were taking a different route from our norm to my allergy shots, T.Puzzle looks out the window, sees a ‘Holiday Inn’ and shouts ‘bunnies!” I quickly made the connection that the other area of highway he thinks he sees bunnies has a ‘Holiday Inn’ as well.

This particular ‘Holiday Inn’ that he saw today was one a few months back I had off-handedly told Full Speed that the Easter Bunny resided. I was having one of those days where he was fixating on anything and everything and couldn’t let a darn thing go. He kept asking me all sorts of impossible and endless questions about the Easter Bunny. We happened to be right next to the ‘Holiday Inn’ and that’s when I said the Easter Bunny lived there. It worked. He curiosity was satisfied and I had some hard-won silence in my truck. I thought that was the end of it.

Now I realize that with this particular untruth (that sounds so much better than saying outright lie), I have dug myself a hole much like a bunny would.

I’m wondering if there are any rooms available next to the Easter Bunny. I really need a vacation.

children, potty training

It Was the Best of Times, It Was the Broccoli of Times

WFAM

It seems little T.Puzzle is showing signs that he is headed toward catching on to this potty-training business. I’m trying to find the balance of pushing him (basically calling him out on his crocodile tears) and trying not to make the potty a huge power struggle that I will ultimately lose.

He hadn’t pooped at school or into the evening. As we began our day he still had kept his pants clean. I decided to strip him of all pants and undergarments because I know this is a technique to help kids learn when they have to go. I figured we would stick around home, I would pump him full of food, put him on the potty periodically and eventually something would happen.

I had T.Puzzle sitting on the toilet for one of his periodic opportunities and I decided to fold a basket of laundry. My thinking was that if I wasn’t hovering over him, he might be more inclined to go. Once the laundry was folded, I’d let him get down from the potty and take it from there.

I’m folding up the last shirt when I hear him began to wail. He is obviously upset as he comes booking out of the bathroom.

“Broccoli came out my butt!” he cries. Tears are rolling down his sad face which only emphasizes his distress. He has a hand clenching his backside as if in disbelief.

I rush to the bathroom and see that he has actually pooped. It’s tiny. And,… it’s green. It kind of does resemble broccoli.

I try to celebrate the amazing feat of getting his first poop in the potty. All he can focus on is that is was broccoli.

As I got him ready for naptime I said, “Keep your Thomas pants clean, okay?”

“Okay,” he said.

About twenty minutes into nap he starts wailing again. This time when I see him he yells, “Broccoli came out my butt, again!”

So, am I potty-training or is T.Puzzle simply hinting that he wishes to become a vegan?