Chaos and Cupcakes

Cameron has been very sick with some unexplained illness off and on for the past month.  We took him to the doctor on Friday where a urine sample was taken to be cultured.  I got a call from the doctor’s office on Saturday morning.  The nurse told me that the overnight culture came back negative for a UTI.  The remaining conversation went as follows:

Nurse:  It’s probably just vaginosis. 

Me:  No, he doesn’t have vaginosis.

Nurse:  What makes you say that?

Me:  He’s a boy.  Boys don’t have vaginas.

Nurse:  Oh.  Yeah.

My sister-in-law recently asked on her facebook page the question, “If you could be any Superhero, who would you be?”  I responded, “Supernanny.” 

But after thinking about it, I think I have one really cool, out-of-the-ordinary superhero ability- the ability to make 2 year-olds pee and poop in the toilet on command.  Really.  I have now successfully potty-trained my 4th 2 year-old in 4 years.  Now, I am not patting myself on the shoulder.  My motives for potty-training my children are purely selfish.  I don’t do it for unselfish reasons like not wanting my children to go to school in diapers and be teased or not wanting my kids to be embarrassed because they are causing all the nursery leaders to wrinkle their noses, gag, and start sniffing random bums.  If my kids want their self-esteem trodden upon because they are too obstinate to put down the Legos and walk 20 feet to the bathroom, that is their fault.  No, potty-training in our house starts the minute I finally get fed-up with chasing down a toddler who is emitting air-polluting fumes into every room that they pass.  It begins when I can’t bear the thought of cleaning up yet another mess made by a child who thinks he/she is big enough to change his/her own diaper but not big enough to actually avoid the messy process in the first place. 

And so we begin the process.  The process that has worked for me with each child is a simple one.  I put the child in underwear and set a timer for 30 minutes and every time the timer goes off, it’s time to potty.  Now, some may say that this is not teaching a child to recognize his or her own body’s need for the toilet.  But in the case of my kids I disagree, as by 2 years of age my kids are already proclaiming to the world (or all the shoppers in Target) that they are in the process of soiling their nappies.  Unfortunately, their choice of words isn’t quite so dignified.

So for the next 4-5 months, we will have only 1 child in diapers.  Unless Jared can successfully convince Sawyer to use the toilet, as he is so desparately trying to do (hey, Jared, you were the one who used the example of Matt changing diapers all day to convince me that you working from home was a good thing.)