Potty Training

Just when I thought it was impossible for me to become more preoccupied with poop…

When you’re a parent, you think a lot about poop. The presence of too much of it, the absence of it, sometimes even the consistence and/or color of it become regular topics of conversation.

Or maybe that’s just me.

Lately my main poop-related concern has been the monumental task of getting it into one of these receptacles:






We are making some progress, though. And I’ve learned a few things.

1. You are a slave to the potty. When your child says that they have to go, you go. Right now.

2. Specific descriptions of rewards work better. For a long time I told her that if she went on the potty she would get a “big treat”. Not interested. When I showed her the bag of M&Ms, and described them in great detail, it made a big difference. For the next few days I would hear her muttering to herself “There are green M&Ms, and red ones and yellow ones and blue ones. But not silver.” Then, like magic, she went.

3. You can’t really spell “M&Ms” aloud as a way of talking about them to another adult without your toddler catching on.

4. Don’t expect your two year old to understand why this is such a big frickin’ deal. The first time we saw pee in that potty, Mr. Monkeysparkets and I did a conga line through the kitchen, singing, “Pee-pee in the Po-ttee! Pee-pee in the Po-tee!” She looked at us like, “I don’t know what’s wrong with you people, but you’d better deliver the M&Ms before you go completely bonkers.” It doesn't matter, though. I never thought it was possible to feel so proud of someone for not peeing in their pants. They grow up so fast...

Oooh, deep

So two weeks ago I read this little story on Dooce.

Last night we were sitting in a nice-ish Indian place. The kids had been pretty good, but it was past their bedtimes and things were starting to get a little hairy. Bella was getting tired of playing in the korma sauce and was starting to get a bit whiny. Someone asked her what was wrong. Without thinking, and probably because this story was floating around the back of my subconcious, I muttered, "She's all cracked out".

Unfortunately I did not mutter softly enough. Isabel promptly proceeded to climb off of her chair and begin jumping up and down in place shouting, "I'm ALL cracked OUT!"

How can you not laugh? But it raises the question, does blogging imitate life, or does life imitate blogging? Perhaps we'll never know.

A Little Bit of Hypochondria

Top Five WebMD Searches I’ve Made This Month

I swear, I am not making any of these up…

5. Staph infection + prevention

4. sudden onset partial hearing loss

3. heart attack + symptoms

2. numbness + big toe

and number one, which is also going to be the name of my Lynyrd Skynyrd cover band someday:

1. Bad Molasses

Sleep Training

Right now? It is one am.

I am typing this post into Word so I can proofread and post it tomorrow after I have (hopefully!!) had a few hours of sleep and consequently have stopped hallucinating.
All that money I wasted on drugs in my youth, when all I really needed was a six month old to keep me in a state of chronic sleep deprivation.

Anyone else been there? We are sleep training. You can’t tell, but my fingers are dripping with sarcasm as I type the word sleep. Because sleep training has nothing to do with sleep, as far as I can tell, and everything to do with excruciating mental torture. It’s about as much fun as it sounds.

For those of you who are blissfully ignorant, sleep training involves taking an infant who is accustomed to sleeping with his parents and attempting to teach him to sleep in his own bed. By himself. You do this by putting him in his crib while he is “drowsy but awake”, giving him a reassuring pat on the head, and leaving the room. Then you wait for the mouth of Hades to open up on the spot and swallow you, because that is what happens next. There is no feeling on earth like listening to your child scream for you.

Of course, both parents are not affected by this the same way. Most men seem to have some sort of switch in their brains that allows them to “turn off” the screaming and sleep right through it. Most women, on the other hand, have the switch in their brains that takes the sound of their child crying and turns it into a uncontrollable urge to rip the skin off their faces and stuff it into their ears. I understand that biologically, this makes sense. He has to be able to get up tomorrow and provide for the family, while me? I can slap a Sesame Street video on repeat, make sure the knives and matches are all out of the toddler’s reach, and call it a day. So it’s a good thing that right now Mr. Monkeysparkets is snoozing like a non-sleep-training baby. God bless his twisted black little heart.

Just kidding! Love you, honey!

Actually, the fact that my hubby is willing to go through this whole thing with me makes him, according to my survey, better than 88% of all husbands out there. And he is astoundingly patient with my cranky, hallucinating, sleep-deprived ass. So seriously, God bless him. And as much as I complain, I do believe that for us, this is a necessary process. A little bump on the road to a well-rested family. We did this with our two year old, and after about two horrific weeks she began sleeping through the night like an angel.

I’m not going to get into defending the practice of sleep training here. If you are an attachment parenting zealot, you’ve already decided that I am going to parenting hell and nothing I can say will change your mind. If you’ve been where I am, you are just nodding sympathetically and saying, “Girl, just stick with it. It’ll all come out in the wash.”

Or something like that.

By the Power of Greyskull

I take a two year old with a sugar rush, a six month old in desperate need of a nap, a large diaper bag, an over sized umbrella and two Mylar balloons. I navigate the crowded parking lot at Red Lobster on foot. In a rainstorm. Bonus points for not loosing my cool when the two year old loses a boot halfway to the car. I somehow stuff all of them into the back of a Mercury Grand Marquis, buckle them in and wipe their noses.

I look back in the rear view mirror and think, “How did I do that with only two arms?” Moments like these, I feel invincible. I am the master of the effen universe, baby.

Three cheers for all you other He-Mums out there who do stuff like this every day. I know you get me.

First Post

Are you bored? Lonely? A friend or acquaintance who is Internet stalking me? Did Google spit you onto this page because it thought I would tell you the capitol of Bavaria? Do you just want to know what a monkey sparket is?

Stick around…




P.S. It’s Munich