not that you asked...

Not HOOF and mouth disease. That's what kills cows.

So the potty training is now officially at a standstill. I called it off entirely once it got to the point where Asher was holding in poop for DAYS AT A TIME. Not only did this suck in terms of the running around shouting every three minutes about imminent poopage/requesting the potty/resisting the pulling down of the pants/shouting about how SAD YOU ARE ABOUT IT once someone's naked butt was ON the potty, but it also resulted in a crappy attitude (pun ABSOLUTELY intended). It's not like I don't get the REASON for the crappy attitude. If I spent the entirety of my day attempting to hold three metric feet of poo inside my body, I'd be a real jerk, too.

We have actually backpedaled to a place where we are rewarding him for any kind of poop, including poop that is in a diaper, so long as the poop came out of his body. We suspect what happens is that he holds it in for so long that he gets anxious and nervous that it's going to hurt when it comes out, so he does anything he can to keep it in. This means he burns approximately 7,000 calories an hour doing laps around the living and dining room. One night, we got so tired of the running and the shouting and the attitude, OMG THE ATTITUDE - that Dave finally just caught Asher in the middle of one of his Poop Marathons and held him off the ground so he couldn't dance and wiggle it off. He squirmed and cried and begged him to put him down but WHAT DO YOU KNOW – about thirty airborne seconds later, the bulge in his diaper was unmistakable, and we inhaled the scent of victory.

I don't want to pressure him. I don't want to fight with him. He is not motivated at all to do this, he doesn't care one eensy weensy little bit about it. He doesn't care about underpants or stickers. He doesn't care about lollipops or new trains. He DOES. NOT. CARE. And I am trying, so very hard, to remember that he needs to do this on his own time, but it's sometimes hard to believe that there is such a thing once a kid is past his third birthday, you know? Sometimes I feel like this is MY failure, even though I know - I KNOW - it's not.

So that sucks, and on top of it, we've been plagued with hand, foot and mouth disease, something Lucy brought home from the church nursery last week (she held off the 103.5 degree fever until MY BIRTHDAY, also known as The Day We Had Secured All-Night Childcare and a Hotel Room, Neither of Which We Were Able to Use). Then Asher got it two days after Lucy did, which was understandable, since I never bother to feed them with different forks, but then, because something is very very wrong with him (please see SHINGLES at the age of 33), DAVE got it about three days after Asher. To the best of my knowledge, Dave is an adult, and every single website we consulted about hand, foot and mouth disease (which is usually mild and does not require antibiotic intervention, just loads and loads of patience, which unfortunately I AM OUT OF) told us that most adults were immune. Most adults are immune because most adults have had some form of hand, foot and mouth disease, whether they knew it or not. Now, it's not like we didn't take our precautions – I mean, nobody walked over to the kitchen table and started licking sippy cup spouts or anything – but once you're told you're probably immune, you just don't worry so much.

So when Dave came home on Wednesday morning at 10am and trudged up the stairs and fell into bed, (not without me first asking him if he'd been fired, because I am SENSITIVE TO HIS NEEDS) where he remained for more than 24 hours, we thought he had something else. When he was finally able to climb out of bed, he dressed for work and made a doctor appointment to try to get some antibiotics for what we both were certain was strep. And then the doctor took one look at his throat and said, “Well, no WONDER it hurts – it's covered in sores.” Doesn't this always seem to be the case with kid illnesses? If you don't get them as a child and you happen to get them as an adult, they're 8,000 times worse? I know it sometimes happens with chicken pox. Anyway, the poor guy has been working 14+ hour days since he got sick because he's in charge of moving his company to a new office building and even though I am missing an Empathy Gene, I am aware of how exhausted he must be. And yet he keeps thanking me for everything I am doing to keep the household running without him.

Because I am pretty exhausted too, what with just having two small children to deal with, one of whom is a poop bomb waiting to explode, and the other being 13 months old and at the age where her wants and desires are all communicated through angry grunts. It's funny, though, how when you get stressed and overwhelmed with the care of multiple children, some of the things you once considered Very Important go right down the tubes. I have always made bathing a priority for my kids. I don't judge anyone on how often they bathe their kids, but I bathe Lucy every night and Asher at least every other night. Lucy really loves playing in the water and it's a nice transition to her bedtime routine, and Asher... well, Asher is getting old enough that he actually stinks sometimes. I can't believe this is the case, but it is, and his, uh... byproducts... make his diaper area a real olfactory disaster. Anyway, I bathe my kids a lot, I LIKE bathing them and how good they smell and I personally love that feeling of getting out of a warm bath and into clean pajamas and yet...

Yeah. I think I maybe bathed them on Thursday? But really? I have no idea. It's all I can do to keep up with the laundry and the meals and the bedtimes (oh, how I miss Dave's help with bedtime!) and so the bathing was the first to go, because 60 percent of the time, we still aren't sleeping through the night. (Let's not jinx the 40 percent, yet.) And I even took them to church this morning that way. OH YES I DID, because nothing sounded better than FREE CHILDCARE, even if it meant I had to carry them out to the car through the snow in shifts and sit alone during the service.

So humor me – what are your shortcuts when you JUST CAN'T TAKE IT ANY MORE? 

And also, so help me God, if one of you suggests a potty sticker chart for my aforementioned troubles, I will make one and then I will HUNT YOU DOWN and give you a PAPERCUT with it.

No. I refuse to ride a mule. You can stop asking.

One of the hardest things for me about blogging is the inability to share every detail of every situation I write about. I don't like leaving out details (although I MUST or this website would take up the entire Internet) (oh, and also WHO WOULD READ IT) and I get really frustrated when I get a comment from someone that goes on and on and on about something I've already tried. To clarify, I'm NEVER annoyed that someone LEFT a comment like that; instead, I'm frustrated with MYSELF that didn't think to include that part of the story, and I get overwhelmed with the desire to write a whole extra post with all the details I forgot to include the first time. As a result, sometimes I have to make a concerted effort to distance myself from what I write as well as the comments people leave, not because I don't love and appreciate them (because I do! I love and appreciate every last one!) but because I almost have to PHYSICALLY RESTRAIN myself from responding to each and every comment with three extra pages of information just so I can make sure each person knows The Whole Story.

That said, I did not feel REMOTELY like that with the recent potty training posts. Everyone was kind and comforting and understanding and I just wanted to say thank you. It's still frustrating and it still REALLY REALLY SUCKS, but I feel like you GET ME, and I don't feel like I have to run back to the computer and bang out my Potty Training Rebuttal every time someone leaves a new comment. So thank you for that.

In much more exciting and much less fecally-centered Household News, Dave and I are less than three months away from taking a six-day, child-free vacation together. We are headed to Arizona, specifically, Phoenix, Sedona and the Grand Canyon. We booked plane tickets and arranged childcare and everything and here is where I tell you that although I am excited (there are not enough exclamation points for my level of EXCITED) I actually think I am more relieved than anything else.

True story: 2009 was a hard year. Yes. The whole thing. Marriage isn't easy, ever, but in this last year ours has been neglected more than either of us would have liked, simply because Lucy's first year on earth (also known as The Year Without Sleep) was so dadgum CHALLENGING. We were constantly exhausted, and constantly frustrated, and because we can't take that frustration out on Lucy (YET), we took it out on each other. We fought a lot this year. We argued and we irritated each other and we didn't spend nearly enough time connecting with each other. And I know that a six-day vacation doesn't automatically fix our bad habits and communication failures, but I think it will be a happy jumpstart.

The other night I couldn't fall back asleep after getting up with Lucy, and my mind was racing as I imagined leaving both kids for six whole days. It sounds so ridiculous to be nervous about leaving them, but in that moment I was, even though they'll be staying with GRANDPARENTS who they know and love. And yet, as nervous and anxious as I was in that moment, thinking about the distance and the separation and the what-ifs, I knew, in the quietness of my heart, that taking this trip with Dave was non-negotiable. It is important to me to have a healthy, fulfilling marriage (as well as to model one for my children), and we need to invest this time with each other, away from our kids, to do that. Continuing to build and maintain a strong marriage outweighs the fear of leaving my children a gazillion times over.

Dave and I could have chosen anywhere in the country to spend these upcoming six days, but we chose Arizona for a reason. Well, two reasons, I guess. One is that his brother moved there a few years ago and we've never been out to see him. The second is that we'll be pretty isolated out there. Two nights at the Grand Canyon? In a bare bones cabin? Without Internet or television to distract us? Needing a FLASHLIGHT to get around after dark? We'll be forced to talk to each other. A lot. And as much as I love seeing cities and being part of the action and checking places off of my To See list, there is something to be said about the quietness of nature. Of not having to make dinner reservations and not worrying about what to wear and not feeling like we have to see every tourist trap and museum within a fifteen-mile radius in order to make the trip “worth it” in a monetary way. Nope, instead we'll be staring at a big fat crack in the earth for more than two days, and while I anticipate that it will be thrilling to see one of the seven natural wonders of the world, I am anticipating the reconnection and one-on-one time with my husband a lot more.

I never wrote about any of my resolutions here. This is mostly because I never really MAKE any hard and fast resolutions, but if you asked me what I'd like to do better in 2010, now that I don't have the distraction of a brand-new baby and the learning process involved in parenting multiple children, I would say that my biggest desire is to be a better wife. Yeah, sure, I'd like to be a better mother, too (who wouldn't?), but I have more than 40 hours of alone time each week with my children, so I know I can do that if I want to. No, I need to work on being a better wife, a more supportive, involved and patient wife, a wife who remembers every day why she got married to this wonderful man in the first place, and I need to remember to do that even when I'm exhausted and drained at the end of the day. I want to remember that I married this man because he was kind and funny and brilliant and protective and because he complemented me. And I am staying married to this man because he is still all of those things, in addition to being an amazing father. I wish I took more opportunities to remember that. I regret that I haven't said it to him more often.

And he's going to read this and hold me to it.

Anyway, we have the general backbone of our trip all planned out, but if you have any suggestions, particularly for good hikes or restaurants or excursions or hotels (specifically hotels/restaurants in Sedona), I would love love LOVE to hear them.

(Also stay tuned for the upcoming Post of Misery. Yes, potty training still blows and DOUBLE YES: hand foot and mouth disease is MAJORLY SUCKTASTIC.)

Potty: Part 2

First things first: We have not had poop in a diaper for, I don't know, three or so weeks. Maybe more. We are SUCCEEDING, in general, at pooping in the potty. I suppose it might seem weird to you, non-parents and parents of children younger than potty-training age, that I continue to use the word “we” when I talk about Asher using the potty, but it would be untrue to say anything otherwise because Dave and I are the ones who deserve about 90 percent of the credit. Yes, technically the poop comes out of Asher, but that's about the only thing he finds himself responsible for at this point, and it is MADDENING.

Asher continues to be completely uninterested in doing anything for himself. He is perfectly happy to be spoon-fed; he is not at all motivated to put on his own clothes or shoes; he has been known to fall to pieces when one of his beloved trains derails off a bridge on the train table. Some of this is due to his perfectionistic nature. (Which: THANK YOU, commenters who also have similar children, as I had no idea other kids were like this and YOU SERIOUSLY MADE MY ENTIRE 2010 BY TELLING ME THEY EXIST.) That means that when he holds his own spoon, he worries that some macaroni might fall on the floor. That means that when he tries to put on his shirt, he might get his head stuck. That means that when his trains fall off the track... oh, honestly, I have no idea why he flips the freak out when the trains fall off the track. I imagine most kids just put them back on and continue playing, but not Asher! This is INSULTING and EMBARRASSING to Asher. He throws himself onto the floor and cries about it and insists that he needs help and sometimes I can convince myself to assist but other times I can get just as stubborn as he is and then we have situation where he insists he can't do it himself and I insist he can and IT NEVER ENDS WELL. (You: Surprise.) Anyway, short story is that this is a kid who doesn't like to correct himself when something goes wrong – he wants it to go RIGHT and he wants it to go right the VERY FIRST TIME.

So the pooping in the potty thing wouldn't be a big deal if when he decided he needed to poop, he would walk calmly over to the potty, pull down his pants, and sit on it. He refuses to do this, because he has to decide for himself when he is ready to want to do something independently. So he refuses to walk over to the potty, refuses to attempt to pull down his pants, refuses to sit unless I lift him by the armpits and place him on it myself. And! This wouldn't be a very big deal, actually, if he pooped when he said he needed to poop. I would gladly continue to pull down his pants for him and arrange his naked butt over the opening of the potty if I only had to do it a few times a day.

BUT THIS IS NOT OUR SITUATION. Instead, about 84,000 times a day, I watch him run in circles. I listen to him yell about how he needs to poop on the potty. About 34,000 of those times, by the time I get him to stop running in circles and yelling, and ask him calmly if he needs to poop in the potty, he says no, and continues doing what he's doing for about three more minutes, which is when he commences running around in circles again and doing this half-whining, half-shouting about the freaking potty. So I drag him back over to it, AGAIN, and pull down his pants, AGAIN, and put him on the thing (I promise you, we are just not at a place where I can bribe or encourage him to do this himself, it is not worth the Epic Tantrum it causes) which is when he starts moaning about how SAD he is about it. “You are sad about it!” he moans. Over and over. “You are SAAAAAAD about it!” And I say, “Why are you sad?” and he says, “You don't WANT to poop in the potty!” and I say, well, do you NEED to poop in the potty? And he says no, and then depending on how angry/frustrated/INSANE I have become, I either make him sit there for a while longer, or I give up and pull his pants up for him (again: no attempts made to have him do this himself, as the last time I tried, there was an Epic Tantrum that got him sent to his room, where he screamed for so long he gave himself a NOSEBLEED, which gave me EXTRA LAUNDRY, so NO, just... NO) and then we repeat the process until roughly 7:30pm, which is when he gets FRANTICALLY urgent and finally produces a turd the size of his thigh within .03 seconds of sitting down. 

And then he's so PLEASED with himself! He gets candy, and can call my mom and tell her about it, and he's so EXCITED about the poop and WHY CAN'T HE SEEM TO REMEMBER HOW EXCITING THE POOP IS?

But, OMG, you guys. This all-day routine with the potty WEARS ME OUT. The constant false alarms... I mean, what do I do? I am following Maureen's suggestion to TRUST Asher and let HIM tell me when he needs to go (because I think he is capable of that, as there has been no poop in the diaper for more than three weeks) but I don't know whether he is just confused about when he needs to go? Or if he COULD go, and is holding himself back? I don't know. And then he produces that... that... LOAF of poop, and I think, well, at least we're clear for a while because how could he POSSIBLY need to poop for the next WEEK after evacuating that from his system, but there we are at 9:30 the next morning, running circles and getting SAAAAD about it again.

Please tell me the urination portion of the program will be much less traumatizing. We haven't even STARTED thinking about that, or he would be sitting on the damn thing TWENTY-FOUR HOURS A DAY.

Two words for you: CAT BATHING

One of my Christmas gifts from my in-laws was a subscription to Martha Stewart Living.

I most DEFINITELY fall into the I Love Martha Stewart camp. It's not that I worship her domestic genius (she has a staff, after all – I can't really imagine what my life would look like with the added bonus of a STAFF working JUST FOR ME, but I can tell you that not only would I dress better, I would likely NEVER find myself in one of those horrible situations where there is no Diet Coke in the house) and I certainly don't find her lovable or charming, but I do love her as a character. I love when she has celebrities on her talk show: either she's talking over them and asking them questions they JUST FINISHED ANSWERING if she'd been listening or she's making it really obvious that she has no idea why the person standing next to her and measuring out a teaspoon of salt is even a celebrity, anyway. IT KILLS ME. I also love it when she does question-and-answer sessions with the audience. I assume they MUST rehearse these questions and answers before the actual taping (otherwise, I imagine some sort of incident where a wiseass gets up and asks about some stock trading tips), but most of the time, you would never know. Oh, the flubbing and the fumbling for the right words and the AWKWARDNESS. I don't know how many years Martha has been on television but she is a lost cause. It is never going to look natural for her.

I do love her magazine, though. I love the Good Things section and I love her recipes (I also have a subscription to Everyday Food and it is the sole reason I have become confident in my ability to cook, which, in turn, has meant that I have come to really enjoy cooking) and LORD ALMIGHTY, do I love the one measly page before the table of contents that is dedicated to her calendar.

You guys. The calendar. It is beyond amusing. Each day has one or two things that “Martha” plans to do either at her farm or homestead or whatever it is she calls what must be ACRES of expensive land or with friends or for work. You'll notice I used quotes around her name. This is because REALLY? I'm supposed to believe Martha herself is going to participate in each and every one of these things?

I can totally get behind January 3 (“store ornaments and other decorations; take down Christmas tree and dismantle wreaths”) and January 7 (“make space in library for recent additions, dust books along tops and spines with feather duster”) even if they do seem like a leeeetle bit of a stretch (what, no one dusts Martha's library when they clean the rest of her house?) because I am particular about some things in my own house, too, and want them done EXACTLY how I want them done, and no one else can do it right.

BUT.

I present to you, January 14: “Bathe cats.” NOW COME ON. I am supposed to believe that Martha is bathing her own cats? There is no way Martha is bathing her own cats. THERE IS JUST NO WAY.

And January 9: “Clean out closet and take care of any mending.” As Dave so kindly pointed out, I can really see Martha cozied up by a roaring fire, darning socks. I suppose by “take care” she could just mean “have it sent out”? BUT THAT'S NOT WHAT THE CALENDAR SAYS. The calendar says TAKE CARE OF ANY MENDING, and the title of this page is Martha's Calendar, so I'm assuming Martha herself will be doing said taking care. But I'll bet those are cashmere socks she's darning.

Anyway. January 29: “Review tax documents.” Yes. Of course. I wholeheartedly believe Martha will be reviewing her own tax documents. I mean, she's only worth $638 MILLION DOLLARS. She's probably just planning on heading over to the nearest H&R Block.

And perhaps my favorite (oh, but I don't know, it's hard to top “Bathe cats”), January 20: “Vacuum and dust coils of refrigerator (unplug it beforehand).” I mean, this is Martha's Calendar, right? So is the advice to unplug the fridge for us? OR FOR HER? Oh, how I giggle thinking about Martha vacuuming under her fridge. Because there is no way she actually does, you know. NO WAY. I don't know why this calendar isn't called “What Martha Would Do If She Were You, and also Poor.”

I enjoy the segments on her TV show where she does workouts, too. This is mostly because she acts like she is the first person in all of history to have discovered something like a leg lift. It's awkward enough watching her on television but then I turned a few pages past the calendar in this month's Living and found a whole four-page spread devoted to Martha's fitness routine. It actually looks like an awesome fitness routine, to be honest, but it's the way the article is photographed that makes me love Martha even more than I already do.

Each photograph (and there are ELEVEN; 13 if you count the one closeup of just her hands on the treadmill and the head shot of her posing with her dog) (yes, I said posing with her dog) (YES, HEAD SHOT) shows Martha demonstrating an exercise with this big ole crazy smile on her face. Like she's modeling hand weights in a Target ad. Which is hilarious enough as it is, but the thing that gets me is that her trainer is also in each of those 11 photographs, but is apparently NOT ALLOWED TO FACE THE CAMERA, lest that take away from The Presence of Martha. Honestly, in every picture, there's Martha, facing the camera with her perfectly coiffed hair and her megawatt smile and there's her trainer, pretending the camera doesn't even exist, fawning over Martha's body positioning with her hair in her face. I guess the funniest part about it for me is that they're not even bothering to try to look like they're interacting. It is clearly a photo shoot of Martha, with a trainer and some weights as props. WHO IS SHE TRYING TO FOOL AT THIS POINT? It's just SO MARTHA. Making everything look easy. Seriously, I love that woman.

Aaaaaand so. I'm kind of out of material at this point. In conclusion, I would like to say that although I do love you, Martha Stewart, I don't love you quite enough to drag myself inside a Kmart for your products. That says a heck of a lot more about Kmart than it does you, I promise. Do non-ghetto Kmarts even exist anymore? I went to one a few weeks ago in search of snow pants for Asher (Target was sold out; like I'd go to Kmart FIRST) and found that I was not at all surprised that the place is struggling in a major way. Every aisle was just full of jumbled... STUFF. Stuff EVERYWHERE. Nothing in piles or organized in even a REMOTELY helpful way.

Anyway. Did you want to see a cute picture (or two) of Lucy? Ok, GOOD. That's really all I've got.

And now it is time to talk about the poop!

No slower approach to potty training exists other than the one we happen to be taking. This is mostly due to the fact that the child undergoing the training is quite possibly the weirdest and most bizarre human being ever created, and by that I mean that he is essentially completely unbribable. Also, he is not stupid, and therefore has gotten wise to us, so that whenever I said something like, “Asher, if you'll sit down and try to pee in the potty, you can have an M&M,” he would just look at me like I might just be the most idiotic person this side of the Mississippi and say, quite matter-of-factly, “You don't want an M&M.” WELL. EXCUSE ME, THEN.

He does that whenever I ask him to do something he doesn't want to do, actually. There are nights when I want him to try just ONE LITTLE BITE of something I've made for dinner (the other night it was mashed potatoes) (no, I am not kidding you, MASHED POTATOES, FOOD OF THE GODS) and again, will offer him everything I can think of that might encourage him to eat it for a reward and he just rebuffs me. Consistently.

I tried everything in the bribery category when it came to the potty: movies, candy, lollipops, toys, new trains, rides on trains, train sets, AN ENTIRE ANTIQUE FULL-SIZE STEAM LOCOMOTIVE JUST FOR YOU, OMG PLEASE JUST SIT DOWN AND TRY. No dice. And so we waited, because I've heard enough horror stories about people who pressured their children into potty training and ended up having to give them ENEMAS or years of psychiatric help or something equally horrible, and then finally, one day about two weeks ago, Asher announced he was pooping and despite his protests and cries of “You don't WANT to poopoo in the potty!” I slammed his little naked butt down on the thing and didn't let him get up until he produced visible solid waste. AND HE DID IT.

It turned out, the key to Asher's willingness to use the potty was doing it successfully ONE TIME; for him, he needs to conquer the fear of the unknown, which is his biggest hurdle in life. He is timid and nervous about anything he has not done or experienced before. This is not a child who enjoys new things or who enters into new experiences without trepidation. Things like trying new foods and pooping in the potty are pretty understandable; I was not, however, prepared to deal with a child who became visibly anxious at the idea of a SNOWSTORM a few weeks ago. He couldn't remember seeing snow before, and was very worried that snow might be loud or scary, despite our assurances that it was quiet and pretty. He had to see it before he relaxed.

The result of a positive potty experience means that in the last two weeks, we have had only two incidents of poop in a diaper, both of which were not at all his fault. The first time, Dave had taken him to a train show (nerd alert!) and he was afraid of trying to use the big potty in a public restroom (UNDERSTANDABLE), so Dave told him to go ahead and use his diaper and he did, after he got Dave to assure him that he would change his diaper right away. The second time was yesterday evening, and I take the blame for that one.

See, Asher Using The Potty is just one big Boy Who Cried Wolf saga. I know that he's just getting the hang of it, and I'm trying to be understanding, I SWEAR I AM, but my GOD, people, I spend entire days just pulling down pants and then pulling them up again after a false alarm. On Tuesday, the false alarms started at NINE IN THE MORNING and ran every 20 minutes or so until poop was finally produced at SEVEN THIRTY PM. Every 20 minutes, Asher would start running around in small circles urgently announcing “You need to poopoo in the potty! You need to poopoo in the potty!” and I would ask if he was SURE he needed to poop, and he would say yesyesyes, and then I would drag the potty to wherever he wanted it (to avoid a potty placement tantrum, obviously) and then he would sit on it for approximately 3.6 seconds before announcing that it was just a toot.

Last night I was SURE we were having our 8,000^th toot episode of the day and I was busy trying to get dinner on the table before Dave got home and Lucy whacked her face on a corner and was crying and... well. It was most decidedly not a toot. My bad.

But DUDE. Two weeks of this confusion between actual poop and GAS. It is KILLING ME. But what makes me laugh (and I'm sorry to those of you who do not have children and therefore have never had to deal with abundant fecal matter from other people, I'M SO SORRY) is that he sometimes ACTUALLY THINKS HE HAS PRODUCED SOMETHING, only to look in the bowl to see... nothing. How is this possible? Sometimes he will jump up and say, “No poop, just pee pee,” and I look in there and the thing is BONE DRY and I am just... confused. How long are we going to be doing this before we figure out exactly what pee and poop feel like when they're coming out? HOW LONG? I mean, two weeks is a PRETTY LONG TIME, if you're asking me.

So yeah, we haven't even started on the pee section of our training program, even though I think we've got it backwards and most kids I've heard of START with the pee and finish up with the mastering of the poop but wouldn't it be JUST LIKE MY KID to do everything backwards, please see: typing his alphabet at 26 months; still not very willing to feed himself with a fork at THREE YEARS OLD.

Anyway, I write this to remember it, but also to encourage anyone out there who is convinced (as I admit I was) that bribery is the only way to go with potty training. My kid? Is not a bribery kind of kid. My kid? Is not at all interested in what “big kids” do. My kid needed a positive experience in order to conquer a fear of the unknown before he could breathe easy knowing that using the potty wouldn't hurt or frighten him in any way. I am no expert in potty training, but I am so thankful that I am learning to be an expert concerning MY KID and not everyone else's.

 

In 2010, I resolve not to shop for appliances with children in tow.

We spent most of New Year's Weekend shopping for a new refrigerator. Should you ever be in the market for such a thing – a Major Appliance, as I believe they happen to be called – take some advice from me and LEAVE YOUR CHILDREN BEHIND. Well, what I mean is, don't take them with you in the first place, I guess, since “leaving them behind” seems to imply that perhaps you might opt to stuff them both inside a front-loading washing machine before heading for the exit. (But don't walk too fast or they'll peg you for a shoplifter.)

We have been in Sears and Home Depot (TWICE) and Lowe's and Best Buy and we never ever EVER left a store because we were actually finished looking. No, we left because someone was either screaming or crying or throwing Goldfish crackers all over the floor or slamming the freezer doors so hard that employees started giving us the stink eye. And then to pacify the screamer, we'd let her out of the cart for a while except she thought that was the most fun Chase The Baby game ever in the history of the world (her: SO MUCH OPEN SPACE; us: CONCRETE FLOORS, WHERE IS YOUR HELMET) and so basically, one of us would look at the refrigerators while the other one herded children out of the tile aisle and back to Major Appliances and then the person who was looking at refrigerators would kind of yell out which model they were thinking would be affordable/attractive for the kitchen and would gesture wildly in its general direction and the herder would take his or her turn checking things out while the other person took over trying to keep the kids from shutting their fingers in the cabinet displays or trying to climb into a floor-model toilet. It was so unbelievably frustrating – I almost think it would have been more beneficial for us to have shopped via Skype. I could have stayed home with the kids, and Dave could have showed me everything via webcam. And we did do a lot of our preparation with the Internet before we went out, but it's really hard to compare the storage space in a counter-depth refrigerator with a regular one without BEING THERE, you know? The only word for what we were when we got home from each outing was WEARY.

Here's how Dave entertained the children. This would have never flown in a store populated primarily with women. But the dudes shopping at Home Depot thought this was downright HILARIOUS.

Also, I don't know about you, but when I'm shopping for ANYTHING, I want to do my own poking around BEFORE I involve a salesperson. I hate it when a salesperson doesn't ask if I need any help and instead, follows me around and stands three inches behind me announcing features while I manhandle a product. ESPECIALLY since I'd already DONE my research, and what she was telling me about each refrigerator was obvious JUST BY LOOKING AT IT. “This one has French doors! This one has a bottom freezer! This one is 33 inches wide and black.” (I KNOW, LADY, I'M LOOKING AT IT.) I just wanted to be left alone, to fondle snack drawers and gallon-size door storage on my own terms. Telling someone to back off and give us a little space is Dave's job, and he was off somewhere making sure Lucy wasn't shoving deck screws under her eyelids.

When it was Dave's turn to shop, the saleslady - I suppose in an attempt to make a humorous joke that would endear us to her and ensure her commission - said, “Oh! Your daughter has blue eyes and you both have brown! Are you sure she isn't the milkman's child?”

I will pause here for a moment while you fix that gaping mouth thing you've got going on.

A) Do we even HAVE milkmen anymore? Let's update this joke, please, if we're going to tell it. And B) INAPPROPRIATE. And NOT FUNNY. It's one thing when a family member or friend says something about your child's suspected baby daddy, right? And don't get me wrong, I know she was trying to be playful and didn't REALLY mean it, but I felt like saying, Lady, you're lucky the only thing I'll do is blog about this, and not report you to your manager, which I think a lot of people might.

Here's where I decide I'm done talking about this entire experience and you tell me how awesome LG appliances are. I'm thinking along the lines of how they never malfunction and last for years and are big pluses when selling a starter home. OK? I forbid you to tell me anything otherwise, as I have seen every other refrigerator ever manufactured in the entire world, ever.

Anyway, shortly after we decided to buy this Major Appliance, I unearthed a $450 doctor bill from a big pile of mail and then Hambone ripped his toenail out, to the tune of a $183 vet bill. In other words, we've spent all but $113 of the earmarked refrigerator money. ALL THAT WORK, for a refrigerator that may never materialize. OH FOR SHAME. Also: STILL VERY WEARY.

On the plus side, Hambone's toenail procedure involved sedation.