There is something happening here. What it is isn’t exactly clear. Oh, wait yes it is, that’s a song from the 60s, I think. Anyway, let me start again. There is something happening here. It’s called potty training, and I’m getting a double dose of it. I guess you can say I’m up to my ankles in s*&#.
I hate to go into a potty training tangent because it’s all been heard and experienced before. Still, it’s one of those rights of passage that are so important in the annals of parenthood (annals? anals?) Anyway, let me back up and open the door to my twisted mind for a minute. You see, I was feeling a bit unloved, underappreciated, lonely and overworked. The solution to that, of course, was to get a puppy. Right? Ya with me on this? Adding another mouth-to-feed, needy, living, breathing being was the solution to all my problems. I was so convinced of this that eventually, my logical-thinking, no-nonsense, overworked, guilt-ridden husband bought me a brand new, beautiful, puppy. Which promptly began to piss all over my life.
That is to be expected, but what wasn’t, and should have been was that my 2-almost-3-year-old would need to be potty trained. My sister began to babysit him and immediately started potty training him while I was at work. That forced us to enforce the potty training at home, which we had both been too overworked to do until this point. So that meant I was now responsible for TWO living beings with orifices that unpredictably spew stuff.
This has been tough to say the least. In the mornings as I am rushing around getting kids dressed, meals ready and adding layer after layer of face makeup to hide the fact that I’m getting old, I manage to sit the baby on the potty. While I’m pleading with him to make a “fast pee,” my older boys will either a) bring my puppy out from his crate and let him roam the house looking for a suitable place to release his night’s worth of bounty, or b) they will let him in from outside before he has done his thing.
So when my baby pees, his little potty plays a regal tune once the pee hits the sensors, and we do a round of high fives and hands in the air and whoops and hollers and we’re ready to go. Only to leave the bathroom and find a puppy mess in the hall. Conversely, if I take the puppy out first and wait with him while he takes care of business, I walk back in to see my baby eating a bowl of cereal while sitting in a pool of pee looking embarrassed. Decisions, decisions.
This hasn’t been just my battle either. When my sister was watching him the other day, she noticed that her son and mine were playing fine together and so she ran to another room to straigten up. When her son entered the room by himself, she asked him where my son was. “He’s in the bathroom training himself,” he said.
She ran back to the bathroom only to find my son sitting on the potty but with liquid everywhere but in the pot.
They say that the best way to train is with positive reinforcement. So with the baby, it’s a candy or cookie for getting pee in the pot. For the puppy it’s often a tiny piece of cotto salami or a doggie treat. For both it’s plenty of praise, dancing and high-pitched baby talk, the more it makes you look like a baffoon, the better.
This has become the norm now in our house. Whenever anyone uses the bathroom, they walk out like a rockstar holding their arms up in acceptance of the praise from admiring fans. This was mildly funny and a way to cope with the dorkiness of having to turn on the praise for the two potty trainees. Then my company moved to a new office. My tiny department is upstairs. With it’s own bathroom. Just feet away from my desk.
Now I have a new training to undertake; fighting the urge to clap and cheer whenever my co-workers exit the bathroom.