not that you asked...

Quick Takes, again Not Quick but surely you expect that by now

One: I have a whole half a post written about Housing and Why We Feel the Need to Fill Every Square Inch of Our Homes but I can't bring myself to publish it because it was so boring to write. I thought it would be an INTERESTING post, because all the comments on the original entry were FASCINATING but I seem to have an issue making a rehashed subject palatable. I think the most fascinating thing for me were the comments from people who knew they lived in a very expensive area and were not going out of their minds about the fact that living in an expensive area for them meant very little square footage. I live in a pretty expensive area but that doesn't seem to stop me from dreaming of more space. I'm not going to GET very much more space, but I'm still thinking about it. And yet! Some of you AREN'T! You're CONTENT where you are! And I am hugely, HUGELY inspired by that. Maybe I'll figure out a way to rework that post over the weekend or something, but I did want to say thank you for your comments. I will try really hard to not hate the 10 percent-ish portion of you who are already living in your dream homes. Possibly I could even learn to love you if you send chocolate.

Two: We are approximately two weeks away from our child-free vacation. I had some serious nervous tummy issues whenever I thought about it up until about three days ago, which COINCIDENTALLY is when my children turned into the spawn of Satan and have been crying about everything and writhing around on the floor whenever I do something so unbelievably insulting and hurtful such as turn off the television after two straight hours of Dora and Diego. So vamonos! Off to the grandparents they go, and I am considering not sending any kinds of feeding or sleeping or how-to-keep-them-happy instructions along with them JUST TO WATCH THEM SUFFER AS I HAVE SUFFERED. Oh, I know, LIKE IT WOULD MATTER. They'll be fine. They'll probably be well-behaved, too, as much as that will annoy me. I can hear the phone call from my mother already, “Oh they're being PERFECT ANGELS and they SLEEP ALL NIGHT and yesterday, they asked for green beans and STEAMED KALE for lunch!” Do you hear me, Mom? If there is kale, I DO NOT WANT TO HEAR ABOUT IT.

Three: In anticipation of our trip, I decided that I would commit to eating better and exercising every day for the month leading up to departure. I'm not really trying to lose weight (although if a few pounds came off, I wouldn't, like, try to put them back ON or anything, obviously) but I did want to make sure that the six days I spent alone with my husband would be six days that I felt really confident about my body. Not in a... racy way, necessarily (everyone related to me just gagged and logged off). I just wanted to do everything I could to try to prevent Body Issues. You know, that horrible thing that sometimes happens where NOTHING you try on looks good and there's all this PRESSURE because you're going out for a Very Nice Dinner and you have all these expectations for a Perfect Night because you're not going to get another opportunity like this until your 10-year wedding anniversary and you're limited to what you brought in your suitcase and... yeah. That's what I want to avoid. I want to feel strong and confident about my body and the best way I know how to do that is to exercise every day and build strong muscle. I was already exercising at least five days a week, but since March 10, I haven't missed a day and I've pushed myself beyond what I would usually do. I am thinking of it as a gift to Dave. I don't think there's anything he hates more than that pouty, whiny, Nothing Fits AND I HATE MY LIFE and also right now I hate YOU! performance I sometimes put on.

Four: (for A'Dell, who wanted a Kindle update) I am still LOVING my Kindle. I haven't read a ton of stuff on it (it's cheaper to buy books with it but it's still MONEY) but I love using it. I am a convert. It really does read just like a real book and I haven't had any issues with it in that respect. On the down side, using it to browse for books is a real suckfest, so I do all my browsing online or in actual stores, make a list of what I like, and then search SPECIFICALLY for those books on the Kindle and save them in my Wish List. This is actually good for one specific reason, and that is that I don't end up buying a bazillion books every time I turn the thing on. I am looking forward to traveling with it for the first time – travel is the real kicker for me. Every time I travel (which granted, is not very often), I bring a stack books to read, and I end up doing this huge annoying comparison and whittling down of selections. Which books are too heavy or too depressing or all too likely to keep me up all night reading them when I should be sleeping? The Kindle makes it so that I don't have to do anything except bring it along. And if I somehow manage to make it through EVERY BOOK I brought for the trip? I just download a new one. UNBE-FREAKING-LIEVABLE. If you are an avid reader who spends a lot of time traveling, you need one. The end.

Five: I decided to participate in our town's bi-annual Multi-Family Yard Sale again this year. I am already nervous about it. I HATE HAGGLING. I hate the bargaining and the lowballing and the sweaty armpits I have 15 seconds into the process and I really hate doing it when someone's pawing through a pile of my old pants. One time Dave haggled politely with the nice salesperson at Pottery Barn and I had to leave the store and breathe into a paper bag outside. Normally I donate the stuff we clean out of our house and closets to charity, but the current load of stuff sitting in my living room isn't worn out or out of style – it's just stuff that I can't use anymore. For instance? I have this adorable pink J Crew turtleneck sweater but I haven't worn it in three-ish years because of the havoc wreaked on my midsection by my two lovely children. How is it that a sweater that seemed to fit perfectly when I was 20 pounds heavier suddenly DOESN'T after the birth of a child? I DON'T KNOW. So instead of chucking it behind the Goodwill, I'm going to try to profit off of it first. Because this is AMERICA, right? The only thing I have left to do to prepare is think of a way to use all the money I'm going to make so that I can be good and disappointed when no one wants to buy my old pants anyway.

Six: So do you remember a few posts ago (I know, they're fewer and farther between these days, please reference paragraph two) when I mentioned how I was starting to get paranoid about being hit by a tree branch while I was out walking with the kids? WELL WOULDN'T YOU KNOW. About a week ago we were out enjoying the weather, and I was concentrating on making it up a long hill while pushing ONE HUNDRED POUNDS of stroller and kids when I heard this crazy cracking sound and not three seconds later BAM! A tree branch as thick as my thigh and as long as a minivan smashed into the ground and splintered into a thousand pieces about ten feet in front of me and the kids. It was the weirdest thing, actually, because I was trying to force myself into this frame of mind that I thought I should be in about the whole thing, you know, oh, if I'd only been five seconds faster... what if I hadn't stopped to pick up the dog poop?.... what if we hadn't gone back into the house for the water bottles? but my heart didn't even pick up SPEED, you guys. I basically didn't react AT ALL, just noted the sudden presence of an enormous limb and then maneuvered the stroller around a pile of splintered wood and carried on like nothing had even happened. And I barely even thought about it again – I almost forgot to tell Dave about it altogether. Ok, so there's not really a point to this story except that I could rightfully have claimed that I NARROWLY ESCAPED DEATH but I just can't get myself all worked up about it and I'll go right ahead and say THAT SEEMS WEIRD. I thought things like this made people devote their lives to saving baby seals and donating their organs and I was not similarly inspired.

Seven: Can anyone out there tell me why I continue to watch Grey's Anatomy? OR WHY YOU DO? I'm just curious.

THIS POST IS NOT ABOUT POTTY TRAINING. You're welcome.

You know what's depressing? Spending money on your house. Which, I know, right? It's nothing new: No one likes to replace the roof or the heating system or the drywall on the ceiling in the kitchen because someone's husband may or may not have been experimenting with completely replacing the plumbing fixtures in the master bathroom. But you know what's EIGHTY-FIVE BILLION TIMES more depressing? Spending money on your house for the very specific purpose of making it beautiful and livable for the NEXT PEOPLE WHO WILL LIVE IN IT.

Here's the thing: We want out of this house. We've outgrown it. Having three bedrooms is wonderful and perfect; having two and a half baths is utterly fantastic as well. But the rest of the living area is not meeting our needs. We do not have a workspace (unless you count the miniature desk we have shoved up against our bed). We don't have a playroom (unless you count the living-slash-family room, which affords the kids a four-by-four foot square area where Asher's elaborate train displays can be quickly and effectively demolished by one exaggerated sweep of Lucy's arm). We don't have a backyard (unless you count the muddy swath of common area beyond our deck). But we can't get into a BETTER house unless we can sell this house for more than what someone would pay for it right now. It needs upgraded bathrooms, new floors, a whole new kitchen. We can't expect it to draw a bidding war (or any bids worth anything at ALL, frankly) with cabinets from 1978 and gouged out Formica countertops and matted-down builder-grade wall-to-wall carpeting.

So we update it. We update it with tile and new bathtubs and hardwood floors and THEN WE WILL SELL IT. Talk about ripping your heart out! Because for all my hard work – all my poring over design websites and image galleries and for Pete's sake I DOWNLOADED THE IKEA KITCHEN PLANNER AND THOSE ARE HOURS OF MY LIFE I'LL NEVER GET BACK - and it's going to belong to someone else. That's the plan, anyway. If I could dig us a basement, I would, but I have heard that at best, it's frowned upon, and at worst, IT'S ILLEGAL. Without a permit, anyway, and I have heard of very few permits being granted for Digging One's Own Basement Underneath an Existing Structure. Not that I have checked, admittedly. But I assume.

Dave and I had this interesting discussion a couple days ago about what we want our next house to look like. I was under the impression that we both felt like we needed to get into a single-family home as soon as possible. I don't know why I thought HE would think that, but I felt like that was the only road we could possibly head down because I would obviously be shortchanging my children if they didn't have their Own Personal Backyard, complete with enormous play structure and various sandbox-ish accoutrements. After our talk, I realize it's less important than I thought (especially if we stay in our current community, where parks and fields and tot lots abound), but it still got the gears turning in my head. Of all the things we COULD go after in a new house, I think the things I want most are room for a separate playroom and more adult-ish living room, a bigger kitchen, and maybe some of the same upgrades we're making to our own house (hardwood floors, updated bathrooms). After living in this very tiny home for almost seven years, just that little bit of extra space seems like it will be SO LUXURIOUS. You mean I might not have to move 85 trains, 612 books, a doll stroller, a MagnaDoodle, two boxes of DVDs and a barn every time I want to sit down on the couch and watch television? ARE YOU FOR REAL?

What I wonder is, how long will we be satisfied with that amount of space after we move? How long before we start wanting more? Bigger? Better? Will I suddenly turn into the kind of person who needs a formal living room for all of her entertaining needs? Will I want a formal dining room? Is Dave going to say the four most offensive words in the English language? (“Where's my Man Cave?”) (COLLECTIVE SHUDDER)

I guess I started thinking about this mostly because of that little entitlement conversation we had last week. I admit, I do feel the pressure to own a single-family home, even though realistically, we don't need one. There's a little nag in my head that says grown-ups live in single-family homes. Kids are happier in single-family homes. That townhouses are starter homes, not long-term dwellings. I feel ENTITLED to a home. I don't necessarily have an entitlement attitude, I guess – I'm not throwing tantrums or stomping my feet or going into serious amounts of debt because I must have things that I can't afford, but I feel like I'm old enough and responsible enough to deserve a house, dammit. I'm not acting on that feeling because I know I can't (not RESPONSIBLY, anyway). But I sure do feel like it's OWED to me. I AM A GOOD PERSON, after all.

Anyway, I'm just curious. Those of you who own your own homes: Are you on your first house? Your second? Was your first house your dream house or were you just settling until you could move? If you're planning to move, are you planning to BUY your dream house? Or are you just kind of working your way up the ladder?

I ask this because I seem to be in the business of assuming everyone else does things like I would, if I lived in my Ideal World. I think we're going to be working our way up the housing ladder, little by little. I always assumed we would be the kind of people who moved from our Starter Home into the house Where Our Children Grow Up, but I don't think we're going to be those people after all. What about you?

We will return to our regularly scheduled, non-potty-training posts just as soon as you finish reading this one

We started potty training in earnest on Monday, March 1. I realize my version of “in earnest” probably doesn't coincide with a lot of other people's versions (there was going to be nothing Boot Camp-y about our process, for example), but starting on Monday, March 1 (brand new week! brand new month!), we were going to wear underwear in the house, and we were going to wear training pants outside of the house. That was pretty much all I was going to shoot for, with very, very small expectations.

But by Thursday, four measly days later, we'd had only two very minor underwear accidents. That was definitely something to be proud of, but the kid was still peeing in his training pants when we were out, mostly because I wasn't exactly suggesting we hit up the bathroom every five minutes. I will admit, I was afraid potty training was going to take forever and I was relishing those last few selfish opportunities to be out and about, enjoying the last bits of freedom that diapers could afford me.

On Friday, we got home from an errand to find that Asher had stayed dry while we were out. The next day, he stayed dry during his nap. On Monday, he announced that he had to poop, and I suggested we try the potty, promising that I would let him have a diaper if it didn't work out. He thought for a moment and nodded. “You are going to try sitting on the potty,” he said very seriously. And then continued: “You can have a diaper if it doesn't work out.”

He sat in the bathroom for about 10 minutes, intermittently announcing his progress. “You are doing it!” he would call out excitedly. I would appear in the doorway. “Mama, leave,” he would say. Ten seconds later: “You are doing it! You are poopooing!” I played it cool, you guys, but when he wasn't watching, I was JUMPING UP AND DOWN WITH GLEE. He finished the job and... well. After we spent a respectable amount of time admiring the turd lying at the bottom of the bowl... that was it, actually. We haven't had an accident or a confrontation and I've only been giving out reward candy about 30 percent of the time and... yeah. Barring some kind of Horrible Regression, I think... I think we're potty trained. I mean, he stops playing when he needs to go and he GOES. And he even asked his Sunday School teacher to take him to the bathroom at church on Sunday. HE ASKED A NON-FAMILY MEMBER TO ACCOMPANY HIM TO THE TOILET. That is a really big deal for this kid. REALLY big. And I know, I KNOW he could regress (and we haven't started on NIGHTTIME training) but I don't think he will. He is already at the point where he doesn't think about it, and where we really feel we can trust him when he says he doesn't need to go, and for CRYING OUT LOUD, he's THREE AND A HALF. His body is physically there. All his... sphincters... or whatever are FULLY DEVELOPED and FUNCTIONING CORRECTLY.

I can hardly believe it. I fought the Poop War for so long and then the Pee War wasn't even a battle? I could have fought the Pee War stumbling drunk and wearing a blindfold. And a pegleg! Now we just have to schedule our official Steam Train Ride, because although he forgets about candy, he is not forgetting about the holy steam train ride. I am okay with this. I am reminding myself that at some point in the future, he could be obsessed with way more irritating-slash-nerdy things, like maybe unicycling or arson.

In conclusion, here are my final thoughts on potty training, if you are going to be like me and perhaps choose not to read a book or educate yourself in any official way before you begin, also known as “winging it”:

Wait until your kid is ready. I didn't know what that meant, really, and I still don't (my kid never stayed dry during a nap, for example, one of the Signs Your Kid Is Ready To Potty Train that always makes the magazine lists), but I would guess that if you try to start potty training with a kid who appears to not even be aware that toilets exist or that Mom and Dad don't wear diapers (seriously, this was MY CHILD) and who then gets anxious or nervous or frustrated or non-cooperative? Hold off. A few days, a week or two... just try again once the nerves have settled down.

Take it slow. I guess technically we could have done the “Hole Up At Home For Three Days” technique, but I don't really love being stuck ANYWHERE for 72 hours, so we wore underwear at home and training pants when we went out and at the beginning? I let him treat the training pants as diapers. As he got the underwear thing under control, I started explaining how we should treat our training pants the same way, and he seemed to catch on pretty quick. But if he hadn't? No big deal. I was in no rush to wear underwear out of the house and possibly deal with wet pants (his) and tears of frustration (mine).

Give lots of choices. I didn't really think choices mattered all that much, but when I was commanding Asher to pee somewhere, it was a little bit of a tension-releaser to let him choose whether he wanted to pee in the frog potty downstairs, or on the big potty upstairs using his Dora seat. He also has about 85,000 pairs of underwear to choose from and if he really resists using the bathroom before we go out somewhere, I give him the choice to pee at home, or tell him we have to use the potty first thing whenever we get where we're going. I am not afraid of public bathrooms, so using the Target bathroom is not an issue. I think he LIKES public bathrooms! Because it's somewhere NEW and he can ask me a dozen bizarro questions about the tampon dispenser. (“But WHY do you put money in it?”)

DON'T START WITH THE POOP. Oh, how much wiser I am now. Chances are, if something is going to make your kid uncomfortable or nervous concerning potty training, it is going to revolve around Number Two. At least, that's what I keep hearing from other moms. Number Two comes after Number One for a reason. RESPECT NUMBER TWO.

Buy reward candy you like to eat. BECAUSE YOU ARE GOING TO NEED IT. Also, you could probably use a beer. I'm just letting you know.

Book Review: Give Me, Get Me, Buy Me, by Donna Corwin

So. First of all. When I was offered the opportunity to read and review this book, I was immediately intrigued because FULL DISCLOSURE: I was the kid who was seen by other kids as The Kid Who Had Everything. My parents gave me everything I really wanted or needed. Barbies and Cabbage Patch Kids and rooms full of dollhouse furniture as a child. A new car when I turned 16. An entire college education. No, you read that right. My college education was funded in full by my parents – I never took out a single student loan for tuition or books or the semester I spent abroad (in one of the most expensive cities in the world) – and when I was finished with my undergrad degree, they made it clear that if I wanted higher education, they'd pay for that, too. You guys, I didn't get an actual, paying job until I was TWENTY. Twenty! The summer before my JUNIOR YEAR OF COLLEGE.

Which, I know, right? So that's the reason this book was so intriguing, you know? Here is an author who has written a book on how parents can change the behavior of their entitled children – children who have been indulged by their parents to the point where they think whatever they want should be handed to them. In all honesty, shouldn't I have been that child? Shouldn't I be a really messed up, fiscally irresponsible adult? But to the best of my knowledge (and my mother reads this blog, so if I'm wrong, she can weigh in) I never demanded or expected anything from my parents. True, I grew up being a little more naïve about money than my friends did, since I never earned it myself (oh, the pride I felt the when I was handed my first paycheck!) but I did understand that the money my parents had wasn't intrinsically MINE. I wonder why, actually. Because I don't remember my parents explaining money to me, and I never had an allowance. And I could have easily, EASILY assumed that I was OWED things; that I deserved whatever I wanted.

Anyway, on to the book, which is written for parents who have essentially formed their children into the people they are by spoiling them or giving in to demands for things to restore the peace in the household or stop tantrums, that kind of thing. It turns out, there are a lot of parents out there who are thinking (VERY WRONGLY) that saying no to the latest cell phone model/Coach purse/sneakers will hurt their children's feelings. After all, don't we want the BEST for our children? Don't we want to make them happy? To that I say, of course we want the best for our children and of COURSE we want them to be happy. Guess how long a new Coach purse makes a teenage girl happy? Until someone else comes to school with a newer one. Apparently it costs a lot to keep your kids' feelings from getting hurt these days. Might I add here that when it comes to the parent/child relationship, “hurting someone's feelings” over something like a purse or a pair of shoes absolutely REEKS of the mindset of some people who are trying to be friends with their child and not their parents. Guess what, people? Kids will have friends. Lots of friends. All kinds of different friends. So they need you to act like their parents, because there aren't any other ones floating around to replace you with.

Ahem.

Donna Corwin asserts correctly that entitled children are not born, they are MADE. Dude, that is so right on. I mean, don't get me wrong: I'm totally guilty of buying or giving my kid something because he's making a stink about wanting it (usually a cookie or a lollipop; he hasn't figured out how to beg for toys yet) but at the same time, I realize that letting him “bully” me into giving in to what he wants just sets the tone for our relationship. If my kid can establish a pattern where escalating a certain behavior makes me give in? I'M SUNK. But I'm not an idiot, either, so to me, that is common knowledge. So as far as this book is concerned, I think Donna Corwin did a great job giving workable, easy-to-follow advice for parents who unfortunately find themselves in this stressful position, with kids who are anywhere from elementary school-aged or teenagers.

Admittedly though, most of the time while I was reading it I was thinking, how on Earth do parents get themselves into this situation in the first place? (Please don't hate me for thinking that, because I know, my oldest kid is three and isn't yet much for tantruming, and who's to say what my kids will be like when they're older? I could very well screw up in this department BIG TIME if they figure out the right buttons to push, you know?) But I really really thought this issue was a big fat DUH: if you give in to all of your child's demands and don't set limits or talk about boundaries, YOUR CHILDREN WILL RUN ALL OVER YOU. And the more you give in, the harder it gets to stop that behavior. The same goes for punishment: if Asher learns that when he hits his sister, I say, “If you do that one more time, you'll go to time out,” then he knows he's got at least one free hit, maybe more if it's the kind of thing I'm prone to say a few times in a row. He's not stupid, he can see that little hole and he'll use it to his advantage. Same goes for the stuff factor.

“When we fail to set rules and boundaries, a child has no expectations. He will continue to push because he knows that he can. There are no real consequences for his bad behavior. … There has to be clear-cut punishment for negative behavior. A parent cannot wait until her child does something really horrible. You must discipline him the minute he breaks your house rules and you must do so on a consistent basis.”

YES, Donna Corwin, YES. Agreed. Truth is, I might not do it perfectly. But I know I SHOULD.

I confess, I did get on Twitter and announce that this book was making me KRAZEE WITH RAGE but I take that back. Yes, I did get a little frustrated with the first two chapters, but after discussing them with Dave, he insisted they were entirely plausible, though I felt insulted by them. (And then the book as a whole got better, anyway.) The author had used an example of a woman who took her newborn to a Mommy and Me class, only to get into a conversation with another woman about strollers. The other mom made the mom of the newborn feel stupid for buying a plain-old, run-of-the-mill stroller from Target. So instead of, oh, I don't know, NOT CARING WHAT OTHER PEOPLE THINK ABOUT HOW MUCH SHE SPENT ON A STROLLER, she got all worried about her Mom Image and went right out to the nearest baby boutique to purchase the trendy, $600 stroller that all the COOL MOMS are using.

I rolled my eyes at that, because SERIOUSLY? People are like that? But Dave assured me that there probably are people like that. I guess I just don't know many of them – my friends are way more excited to find a bargain than they are to brag about how they paid full price for a trendy stroller. I suppose there MUST be people like that out there, or Donna wouldn't have written this book. Right? I KNOW!

Anyway, what do you guys think? Are you entitled kids yourselves? Are you fighting this battle in your own homes (I assume with older children than I currently own)? Are you establishing guidelines now to prevent this? Is this something that frightens THE PANTS OFF YOU? I confess, it does me. 

Seven Quick Takes, yes, AGAIN

One: Well, first things first, we have to address The Hair. My own comment probably got lost in the MYRIAD of other hair-related comments, so I will repeat it here: I seriously SERIOUSLY thought that was bad hair. ON ME. But the overwhelming response is that my air-dried hair is NOT bad hair at all, and that I am just probably very used to seeing it flat-ironed straight, and that all I need are a few curl-enhancing products and I will basically land myself a Pantene ad if I so much as walk out the front door. So first I should say thank you for all your comments and advice and willingness to participate despite that last post seeming to be of the Compliment Me! variety, which was not my intention AT ALL. I thought you'd hate the hair! I thought you'd sneer in the general DIRECTION of the hair! BUT YOU LOVE THE HAIR. I suppose we shall continue the Hair Experiment, then. First on the list is another air-dry episode; however, this time I will be armed with Products (recommendations welcome) and perhaps in another week or so, I plan to mix it up with some color. OH YES. You promise you will be brutally honest in both instances, don't you? I mean, that's the best part!

Two: Last night I came home to find a three-inch rip in our couch. Our couch is six-ish years old, but it was NEW when we got it and it was from Pottery Barn. Specifically, it was from the Pottery Barn Outlet back when the Pottery Barn Outlet was an actual OUTLET and not a substandard Pottery Barn store that Pottery Barn now manufactures items for. Anyway, my parents bought it for us as a Christmas gift for less than half the price it goes for now because it was “damaged” (the wooden legs were chipped a bit – I colored them in with a brown marker, easiest way to save $700 EVER) but now here we are, six-ish years later and it has a giant rip right where Dave rests his back every night. What, you don't have assigned seats in YOUR living room? So part of me is shaking my fist at Pottery Barn and cursing their shoddy craftsmanship, but the more realistic part of me understands that we've put a lot more wear and tear on this couch than most people would since it's the only place we sit besides the bed. The. Only. Place. When you have a small house, you have small amounts of furniture, right? So we have one couch, and when we're home, we're sitting on it. And when we're not, the dog is. And then this other part of me is angry at that last part of me because WHY AM I MAKING EXCUSES FOR POTTERY BARN, ANYWAY? My couch! Is RUINED!

Three: Regarding the above. Suppose you wanted to move in the next year or two anyway. Suppose your children weren't going to get any neater or better at keeping juice and milk inside their sippy cups and that the dog's paws are not going to get any cleaner when he comes inside the house. Do you cover that rip up with some duct tape and a slipcover and tough it out until you get into your next house so you can buy furniture that suits your new house? Or do you buy something new right now, that you hope will work anywhere you happen to move because OMG A RIP IN THE SOFA, can we please have ONE NICE THING IN THIS HOUSE, also please show me a slipcover that isn't straight out of Design Hell? … SIGH. Yeah. I know. Ok, ok, so the couch is never going to be the one nice thing we own, is it. The couch is always going to look like someone smeared it with snot and various other bodily fluids. BECAUSE IT WILL BE.

Four: Something I didn't think about before embarking on our Potty Training Adventure was that Lucy would be hanging around, meddling in everything. Loitering, if you will, much like tweens at Hot Topic. I have to be on my game at every moment. If Asher pees and stands up to pull up his underwear, I have to be RIGHTTHERE or else Lucy is THISCLOSE to pulling out the potty insert and dumping the contents of someone's bladder onto the carpet. Yesterday morning Asher had a minor accident (“Mom, I got pee on my legs”) (“Mom, I got pee on my underwear”) (“Mom, I got pee on the floor”) and while I am taking his wet pants off in the kitchen (without acting frustrated or annoyed!), Lucy is RIGHTTHERE, thoughtfully contemplating and then, as I turn my back for ONE MILLISECOND, thoughtfully exploring a small puddle of pee with her index finger.

Five: We're one month away from our Big Child-free Vacation. I am kind of nervous. Ok, I am really nervous. Both kids are going through separation anxiety phases and one kid is learning how to pee in something other than an absorbent wad of cotton and the other kid still wakes up a bazillion times a night and expects her MOTHER to be the one picking her up out of the crib and... yeah. I'm worried. I know they'll live and they'll likely be fine (happy, even! possibly even well-fed!) but I can't stop torturing myself with mental images of their prolonged anguish at my absence. Asher will weep openly while clutching a photograph of me to his chest; Lucy will sink to her knees in her crib and wail while rattling the bars of her toddler-sized prison. Honestly, I think the hardest part will be putting myself on that plane. Once we're in the air, there's no turning back, and I have to let it go, you know? But up until that point, I am going to be in a perpetual state of mild freakout. Sometimes I console myself with the thought of staying here, but most of the time, I just worry. I can't help it; I WORRY.

Six: Someone heard a rumor about something that happens when you turn 16...

  

Seven: …and I have a feeling her daddy isn't going to turn this mug down.

 

I probably shouldn't buy reward candy that I like eating

We're potty training again!

Wait, you are... excited about it, aren't you? I mean, you guys are the whole reason I went so far as to use an exclamation point up there. I figured you couldn't WAIT to read some more in-depth analysis of my child's bathroom habits. I suppose if we're going to get technical, we can call them his EVERYWHERE habits since we now carry that potty from floor to floor and room to room. It is getting harder to let him use it in the living room because he has suddenly hit upon the concept of Privacy and wants me to leave him alone while he goes and where exactly am I supposed to go then? The KITCHEN? Where we keep the REWARD CHOCOLATE? Oh HECK no.

Anyway, we only started retrying the potty thing on Monday afternoon, and he isn't exactly thrilled about it, but he is being mildly cooperative and we've only had one accident. The accident scared the everloving CRAP out of me, truthfully, and not because he christened something important or expensive with urine; more because everyone assured me that all kids HATE the feeling of pee running down their legs and that that particular feeling would go a long way as far as encouraging them to want to use the potty and YET. Mine didn't even NOTICE. And when I pointed it out, he was all, So? What's the big deal? Can I get back to this video game I was playing or what?

And obviously that was my mistake – he's a rookie! I trusted his judgment WAY too early in the game; I should have interrupted him more than I did while he was playing and then I should have refused to believe him when he said he didn't need to pee. The weirdest thing, though, was when I pointed out the dribbles on his legs. I expected him to FLIP THE FREAK OUT based upon similar experiences we have had with liquidish substances; it is really really hard not to immediately place him on boarding school waiting lists or eBay when he gets a tiny smidge of yogurt on his finger (OH THE WOE AND TRAGEDY, also I HAVE TAUGHT YOU THE BEAUTY OF THE NAPKIN) and yet, no response at all to the pee. None. I am frightened by this, as you might imagine.

However! We forge ahead. We have stacks of freshly laundered underpants; we have potty chairs and potty seats; we have the promise of a ride on a steam train when he is daytime diaper-free. I'm afraid I didn't communicate the steam train deal very effectively when I first thought it up. I got him all excited about it and we showed the website to everyone he knew and I emphasized how FUN it would be for BIG KIDS to ride and then, after his first successful pee, he stood up triumphantly and declared, “It is time to ride the steam train!” Kid, we haven't even left the house in a pair of underpants yet. I'm not letting you leave a puddle of your DNA on the seat of a steam train.

We haven't had poop in the potty in weeks (WEEEEEKS) but we are finally moving past the anxiety he developed about it. Two weeks ago we were dealing with a kid who was holding it in for days at a time out of fear; in the last few days he has been telling me when he needs to go. We're at the point now where I gladly put a diaper on him and sequester him in the bathroom until he's finished. Last week it took him anywhere from twenty to thirty minutes to complete this... uh, task; yesterday he was done in under five. And without any of that running in circles and holding his butt thing that was SUCH A JOY to observe in public. Yes, he's wearing a diaper when he does it, but he's standing NEXT to a toilet, and on Friday he pooped in a public bathroom stall while I lurked outside it like a pedophile. I am trying to be patient. I think I am succeeding, for the most part. I know we will get there.

One of the hardest things about it is knowing how friggin' SMART this kid is. He can write his entire alphabet, he can spell probably ten to 15 words, he can count to 100 AND he has actually grasped the concept of numbers – give him two numbers and he can tell you which is bigger or smaller and he is also starting to understand some of the simpler concepts of addition and subtraction. He appears to have a very good-quality brain inside that skull, but the part that registers independence hasn't really kicked in yet. It's really annoying (yes, I said it: ANNOYING) when BOTH my children decide they're going through a separation-from-mommy anxiety phase, and it would be SO helpful if Asher was willing to play alone in his room for a bit of time, or even let me go downstairs to transfer wet clothes to the dryer without a full-on panic attack. On days when he doesn't nap, he is glued to my side for twelve straight hours and it is no coincidence that on those days I am busting out three liqui-gels of Advil by 2pm.

Oh, goodness, I am going to start getting REAL EXTRA-COMPLAINY if we continue in this vein, so how about some pictures of my hair?

I was Twittering about this the other day, how I decided to let my hair air dry to see if it was remotely attractive and something I'd like to try on a regular basis and none of you believed me when I said it was bad but YOU GUYS, HERE IS PROOF THAT IT WAS BAD:

 
(Also, please note what appears to be my Man Hand holding the camera.)

I don't like it like this. Granted, I didn't have any appropriate hair products on hand, so I made do with some cheap mousse, so how much could I have really expected? Maybe I'm just too used to seeing it straight. The other annoying thing is that four entire hours after my shower, it was STILL WET. 

I have thick, wavy, sometimes curly hair, and I've wanted to try hot rolling it at this new length, but the problem lies in the fact that when I flat iron my hair first (and I flat iron it every day, because I am terrible at blow drying it straight, it just turns into frizz, not to mention MY ARMS GET SO TIRED), it won't hold curl. So I let it air dry, decided it was heinous, and then hot rolled it with rollers I've had since the early 90s.

I think the results were WAY better than the air drying situation:

 
But I still don't know if it looks too... I don't know, 1980s? I mean, I know the '80s are back or whatever, but this is less FUNKY '80s and maybe more like my mom's '80s experience was. Right? Wrong? I don't know. Do you like it?