9.03.2009

 

Up front for boys, in the middle for girls

I got peed on a lot today. By Kent. Who also peed all over himself. In a public restroom. And the bag with all of his extra clothes and training pants was out by our table.

I’m glad we’re potty training right now. Really, I love helping Kent enter this new stage of independence, and I enjoy seeing the progress he’s making. I think he’s going to get the hang of everything soon enough, and I’m not putting any pressure on him or myself to get it done in any certain amount of time. He’s been diaper-free (except for the occasional long car ride) for weeks now. What that means for my day-to-day life at this moment, however, is a lot of laundry, a lot of timers, a lot of hand-holding to the bathroom, a lot of helping him pull down his pants and then pull them back up when he’s done, a lot of thinking, “Now, how long has it been since he had that huge glass of water??”, a lot of coaching and “you can do it” talk when he’s trying reluctantly to poop on the potty, and a lot of stickers on the potty sign in the bathroom to mark his progress. Frankly, sometimes I get tired of the many steps we have to go through when we’re out, because it means we have to take off his shoes, shorts, and training pants every time he sits on the potty, then put them all back on, and doing that every hour all day gets tiring.

Kent and I were at lunch by ourselves today, one of us happily devouring Indian food while the other happily devoured goldfish crackers, naan (soft Indian bread), two bites of curry chicken, five kernels of corn from the vegetable korma, and a bowl and a half of mango ice cream. We also both drank copious amounts of water. Most of the way through the meal, I knew it was time to take Kent to the potty, but I didn’t want to take all my stuff with me and have them think I had skipped out on my bill or something, so I left the diaper bag at the table. Mistake # 1. Lately, at home, I’ve been teaching him when he sits down on his little potty on the floor that he can leave his training pants around his ankles instead of kicking them all the way off, making it easier to pull them back up by himself, so I thought I might try that in this restroom so that I didn’t have to take off his shoes, his shorts, and his training pants. Since he’d have all that stuff binding his ankles together, I figured I could just sit him on the front edge of the potty facing forward, instead of facing backward like we do when he’s naked. Mistakes #2 and #3.

The universe decided that I needed a clear, obvious demonstration of exactly how profoundly stupid those ideas were. The minute I got Kent’s shorts and training pants down around his ankles and sat him on the front edge of the toilet, his pee shot out in a strong parabolic curve that went straight over the toilet seat and onto everything in its path. His shorts, his training pants, his Crocs, my shorts, my legs, my sandals (and therefore my feet), and the floor. He doesn’t have enough control to stop peeing, even if he sees that it’s making life rather difficult for his mom, so he just kept peeing, and I tried the hardest I could in those roughly 15 seconds to aim his pee anywhere but straight out. I managed to point him down for a little bit, but that mostly just made the pee go through that little gap between the toilet seat and the toilet bowl, meaning it still got out and onto the aforementioned surfaces. And then, finally, it was over.

Ack.

I didn’t panic, but I did grab as many paper towels as I could to clean up as much of the floor mess as I could, and I did count my blessings that nobody else was in the bathroom at the time. I also tried as hard as I could to mentally kick my own ass for being so stupid. It reminds me of something I’ve heard about airplane crashes: when a plane malfunctions and crashes, for whatever reason, it’s never just one thing that goes wrong. There has to be a whole chain of things that go wrong in order for a plane to go down.

Lesson for today: don’t be an idiot, Erica. Take the diaper bag with you whether you think you need it or not, don’t worry what the restaurant people might think of you, take the pants all the way off, and never, EVER forget the ridiculous fact of nature that boys pee straight out, not down like you do.

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Comments:

hahaha, i swear i'm laughing with you, not at you. wait, why aren't you laughing?

i literally LOLed when i read it and then Connor wanted to know what was so funny, so i told him, and he looked at me, made a funny face, and then laughed and said that Kent was so silly.
 
Oh, I'm laughing. I definitely have the ability to look at a situation like this and think it's hilarious, even if it did happen to me. =)
 
I love that until about the time they are 3 or 4 getting peed on by your kid is funny. Every time. I was once changing E while a friend was over and he started peeing straight up in the air. I grabbed that little sucker and aimed it down so as not to have pee everywhere. The friend said, " i am fairly sure you can't just pinch off the flow at this point." It took me a minute to realize he thought that was what I was trying to do...
Reason number 52 why I was afraid to have a boy.
Makes you so happy for washing machines...
 
Oh, Erica, poor Erica. At least you have a sense of humor about it though!

Some friends from grad school have a baby girl and told a funny changing table story. The dad lifted her legs up to put a new diaper under, and timed perfectly with the lift, she projectile pooped in an arc several feet away onto the floor. They laughed so much! Like she is a poop weapon with timing and aim and everything. ROTFL!
 
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