Our puppy is potty-train proof. I'm convinced she will never be potty trained in the conventional sense. No, it will be more the 1950s style potty training in which you take them (them in the 1950s referring to an actual child) to go potty on a schedule every 45 minutes or so. We have become confident enough in her bladder muscles that we have started giving her more and more freedom in the house, but it always comes back to the critical issue of her leaving it up to us to tell her when she needs to go outside to do her business. She seems to be completely incapable of alerting us as to when she has the urge.
Take this morning for instance. I'm sitting on the bed, writing on the laptop, when I get a whiff of Odeur de Poop, and I stupidly think, "Huh, that's smells suspiciously like poop, but that's impossible! Oh WAIT..." I had forgotten that Poe had been running loose in the house all morning long. I catch out of the corner of my eye a shadowy figure and look down to see this black menace curled up in the Hunchback of Notre-Dame pooping posture. Immediately, I jump up, flailing appendages frantically, screaming unintelligible monosyllabic sounds, gracefully executing the "No! No! Stop shitting on the carpet!" dance. Of course, soon after this I realize that she chose where I was sitting as the end of her crap journey and that there is a whole trail of treats preceding her. After I get her out the door, I start planning my poop scooping strategies. I can't believe a part of my day is actual spent in planning how I'm going to pick up excrement. This incident requires more creativity than usual because we have run out of paper towels. (We haven't made our Costco pilgrimage this month and, again, too cheap to buy them anywhere else.) After I've spent a little time, appropriately, in the bathroom, devising my battle plan, I make it back to the scene of the crime with Nature's Miracle (nature's miracle indeed) in one hand and napkins and plastic bag in the other. Dave has already beaten me to it. It's interesting to see how our minds work. His weapons of choice are handy wipes and paper plates cut up into makeshift shovels. (Evidently, I was in the bathroom for a while.)
Vaughn has been blissfully unaware of the whole event, in his room (if you must know, watching TV), and trots upstairs after we've finished our cleanup job, the evidence of the whole distasteful experience having been promptly eliminated. Unfortunately, the air in the room has been permeated with the potent Odeau de Poop, what with the whole bottle having been spilled on the floor. Of course, leave it to Vaughn to state the obvious with his power of observation in his ever so delicate manner, "Something smells stinky up here."
It baffles me that Poe is now 8 months old and the ability to notify us to let her go outside to potty still eludes her. The closest she comes to it is doggy charades in which she sits on her haunches and goes through a series of paw signals and earnest eye contact, puppy sign language for "Pardon me, but I do believe I need to use the facilities." Unfortunately, you have to actually be looking at her to grasp this cryptic communication because she would never be so crass as to actually interrupt you with a bark or nip to get your attention. It's the equivalent of a mime trying to alert someone that a bomb is about to go off.
I have also concluded that I not a very good potty trainer. I started before Vaughn was 2, and it wasn't until he was well over 3 that he was potty trained in the conventional sense. (I was biting my nails, fearing that he wasn't going to be trained by preschool. As a matter of fact, I think I was still covertly putting him in Pull-ups for that first year, just as a matter of insurance, of course.) He's still in diapers at bedtime, and frankly, I am retiring from my potty trainer duties, taking the advice of the pediatrician that "It'll happen. Give it time," and if that means eventually switching over to Depends, so be it. After my ordeal with Poe, I am at peace with the fact that it's me, not them. I will never make it to the potty training big leagues, and honestly, I'm okay with that.
Thursday, September 06, 2007
Wednesday, September 05, 2007
Bob the Brainwasher
Vaughn woke up at an obscenely early hour this morning. (I think it was 8 or something like that, which is obscene considering he didn't actually fall asleep until 10 p.m. or so the night before.) We do try to get him in bed at a reasonable hour most of the time (8 p.m.), but he manages to keep himself distracted and awake until 10 or thereabouts. His techniques range anywhere from repeatedly slamming his head or various other body parts against his bed's headboard and the surrounding walls to enlisting our participation in a sudden epiphany or invention or creation of the moment. His greatest inspirations seem to come after the hours of 9 p.m. Last night he slithered his way up the stairs to the foot of our bed at around 9:30 and covertly handed me a "card" he had just made. I guess all this undercover action was in an effort to keep from alerting Dave to his presence. I'm afraid Dave was already wise to him, though, because Vaughn had to slither his way past the side of the bed where Dave was perched, watching TV, to get to me, and then, ever so sneakily, slither his way back past Dave, back down the stairs to feign sleep in his equally sneaky manner.
Anyway, I put on OPB this morning and let him watch it in our bed so Mommy could get some more "rest." I think I mentioned that my New Year's resolution this year was to be the best mediocre mom, and in working towards that goal I do liberally use the TV as my nanny 24/7. In the background I start to hear the pithy theme song of Bob the Builder.
"What day is today?"
"Wednesday."
"So Bob is on Sundays and Wednesdays." Vaughn says this like he's figured out some complex math problem. Hey, he may not be able to read, but I'll have my own live-in human TV Guide. Unfortunately, it will only have the listings for PBS kids programming, but I can work with that.
Twenty-five minutes later, Bob is wrapping up his program with his usual meaningful life lesson--something about trees and recycling or some other environmental crap. I really liked Bob when he was an actual builder and cut trees down, sawed them up, and used them to expand the growing metropolis of Bobville, but then the Powers That Be decided the show needed a little refreshing. This involved, among other things, a new British character in the form of a quad bike (because a construction site isn't complete without one of those, and if a quad bike could talk, you know it would have a British accent) and a new, more gay, voice for Bob. Bob didn't have the most masculine voice to begin with, but evidently, it was too butch for the new theme of "Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle." Yes that is a very common refrain on new construction sites everywhere as they're bulldozing down acres of old growth, herds of little helpless forest creatures scampering frantically ahead of them, snatching a last desperate glance back at what used to be their home.
Bob now spends more of his time..well...reducing, reusing, and recycling, waiting for old trees to succumb to Mother Nature before building anything, and scrounging around in his neighbor's garbage for other building materials. Because of this new politically correct Bob, I haven't been as keen on Vaughn watching it. Frankly, it gives me the creeps, and this morning's episode did nothing to reassure me.
Bob: That's right, Lofty. Remember what I always say, "Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle." (They repeat this ad nauseam in every episode, just in case the little kiddies don't get it the first time.)
Beside me, I hear a quiet monotone child's voice: "Reduce, reuse, recycle. Reduce, reuse, recycle. Reduce, reuse, recycle..." I turn and Vaughn is staring, unblinking, at the TV monitor, rocking back and forth, repeating this mantra again and again as if his life depended on it. Okay, now that is just creepy.
Don't misunderstand. I don't have a problem with recycling as a concept. We recycle, but not obsessively and more out of practicality than because we actually "love our Mother" (Earth). We get more mileage out of our allowance of 1 garbage can a week if we recycle. If we didn't recycle, we'd have mountains of refuse heaped in our backyard because we're too cheap to pay for the extra garbage can. We finally had some professionals come in to finish our deck. One of the carpenters, evidently environmental inclined, admired the fact that Dave had used a pail handle as part of the deck's cement foundation--part of that whole reuse motto. What he didn't know is that Dave didn't use it to re-use it. He used it because it was within arm's reach at the time and it didn't cost him anything.
No, I don't have a problem with the general concept of reduce, reuse, recycle. I have a problem with burdening 3-, 4- and 5-year-olds with the idea that they need to police the waste disposing activities of their homes. I was raised with the 3 R's, only at the time I just thought I had a cheap dad. I was taught the 3 R's often and regularly. For example, I didn't learn to ride a bike without training wheels until I was 12. I wasn't developmentally delayed or anything. It's just that it wasn't until then that my feet could actually hit the ground while sitting on my bike. You see, I graduated from my tricycle straight to an adult bike, complete with fatherly fashioned training wheels, neither of which hit the ground unless I was dangerously tilted to one side or the other. My dad figured: Why buy her an age appropriate bike when we know she still has a good 10 or so years of growth in her? That's a waste. (Reduce) Why buy and get rid of 2 or more cheap bikes in the next 10 years when we could just buy 1 cheap bike now that she can take with her when she moves out of the house? And furthermore, (my dad's a Planner), why buy training wheels from a thrift shop that she's eventually not going to need when we have perfectly good metal laying around and a welder that is just itching to be used? I'm sure the wheels came from my trike (Reuse), and he probably melted my trike down for the metal (Recycle).
Ah, sweet, sweet memories. Aw, I love you, Dad. *muh*
Anyway, I put on OPB this morning and let him watch it in our bed so Mommy could get some more "rest." I think I mentioned that my New Year's resolution this year was to be the best mediocre mom, and in working towards that goal I do liberally use the TV as my nanny 24/7. In the background I start to hear the pithy theme song of Bob the Builder.
"What day is today?"
"Wednesday."
"So Bob is on Sundays and Wednesdays." Vaughn says this like he's figured out some complex math problem. Hey, he may not be able to read, but I'll have my own live-in human TV Guide. Unfortunately, it will only have the listings for PBS kids programming, but I can work with that.
Twenty-five minutes later, Bob is wrapping up his program with his usual meaningful life lesson--something about trees and recycling or some other environmental crap. I really liked Bob when he was an actual builder and cut trees down, sawed them up, and used them to expand the growing metropolis of Bobville, but then the Powers That Be decided the show needed a little refreshing. This involved, among other things, a new British character in the form of a quad bike (because a construction site isn't complete without one of those, and if a quad bike could talk, you know it would have a British accent) and a new, more gay, voice for Bob. Bob didn't have the most masculine voice to begin with, but evidently, it was too butch for the new theme of "Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle." Yes that is a very common refrain on new construction sites everywhere as they're bulldozing down acres of old growth, herds of little helpless forest creatures scampering frantically ahead of them, snatching a last desperate glance back at what used to be their home.
Bob now spends more of his time..well...reducing, reusing, and recycling, waiting for old trees to succumb to Mother Nature before building anything, and scrounging around in his neighbor's garbage for other building materials. Because of this new politically correct Bob, I haven't been as keen on Vaughn watching it. Frankly, it gives me the creeps, and this morning's episode did nothing to reassure me.
Bob: That's right, Lofty. Remember what I always say, "Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle." (They repeat this ad nauseam in every episode, just in case the little kiddies don't get it the first time.)
Beside me, I hear a quiet monotone child's voice: "Reduce, reuse, recycle. Reduce, reuse, recycle. Reduce, reuse, recycle..." I turn and Vaughn is staring, unblinking, at the TV monitor, rocking back and forth, repeating this mantra again and again as if his life depended on it. Okay, now that is just creepy.
Don't misunderstand. I don't have a problem with recycling as a concept. We recycle, but not obsessively and more out of practicality than because we actually "love our Mother" (Earth). We get more mileage out of our allowance of 1 garbage can a week if we recycle. If we didn't recycle, we'd have mountains of refuse heaped in our backyard because we're too cheap to pay for the extra garbage can. We finally had some professionals come in to finish our deck. One of the carpenters, evidently environmental inclined, admired the fact that Dave had used a pail handle as part of the deck's cement foundation--part of that whole reuse motto. What he didn't know is that Dave didn't use it to re-use it. He used it because it was within arm's reach at the time and it didn't cost him anything.
No, I don't have a problem with the general concept of reduce, reuse, recycle. I have a problem with burdening 3-, 4- and 5-year-olds with the idea that they need to police the waste disposing activities of their homes. I was raised with the 3 R's, only at the time I just thought I had a cheap dad. I was taught the 3 R's often and regularly. For example, I didn't learn to ride a bike without training wheels until I was 12. I wasn't developmentally delayed or anything. It's just that it wasn't until then that my feet could actually hit the ground while sitting on my bike. You see, I graduated from my tricycle straight to an adult bike, complete with fatherly fashioned training wheels, neither of which hit the ground unless I was dangerously tilted to one side or the other. My dad figured: Why buy her an age appropriate bike when we know she still has a good 10 or so years of growth in her? That's a waste. (Reduce) Why buy and get rid of 2 or more cheap bikes in the next 10 years when we could just buy 1 cheap bike now that she can take with her when she moves out of the house? And furthermore, (my dad's a Planner), why buy training wheels from a thrift shop that she's eventually not going to need when we have perfectly good metal laying around and a welder that is just itching to be used? I'm sure the wheels came from my trike (Reuse), and he probably melted my trike down for the metal (Recycle).
Ah, sweet, sweet memories. Aw, I love you, Dad. *muh*
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