Wanted! Toilet Training Advice

Aidan refuses to use the toilet. No matter how much Paul and I cheer, coax or bribe he shows absolutely no interest. When Aidan started walking at 9 months, Paul and I had pipe dreams of his early physically ability signaling great proficiencies to come. While Paulina didn’t even start scooting until a year old, she has already started using the toilet regularly. We got it totally wrong.

I’ve been pondering how my parents were able to get me and my three brothers to use the toilet. I thought back to all of the positive reinforcement, purchasing of books that explain the process, songs and coaching. Oh yeah, they never did any of that. They just put us on the toilet and made us “go.” Then I started to think about all of the mentoring and words of encouragement they gave us over time to get us to do chores, homework, excel in sports and music and get A’s on tests. Oh yeah, there was none of that either, just the guilt laced with threats speech of how they sacrificed everything to come to this country and you better do well or else.

I guess that’s the curse of being first generation. We can hardly spin tales of having no shoes, no indoor plumbing and nothing to eat. The best Paul can come up with is that we used to play Pong on Atari while they have nearly lifelike graphics on every gaming system. I once told Maxwell that I used to wear my cousins hand-me-downs. He just rolled my eyes and asked if he could play on his DS. Later he asked me, “What’s a hand-me-down?”

What’s the best way to encourage Aidan? What can his brain really understand at 3? Going the route of “do it or else” seemed to work for my parents. Others keep telling us not to force it, he’ll come around. I guess we’ll continue to go through 120 diapers a month until he comes around.

"It's for the show..."

Natalie does this very funny (I know, all parents think their kids are hilarious…) dance where she imitates one of the Peanuts characters from A Charlie Brown Christmas. She closes her eyes, snaps her fingers, shakes what her mama gave her and flips her hair from side to side.

I told her that I wanted to record an HD video of her to send to her Nanay and she immediately asked, “Are you gonna put in on YouTube so that I can be on America’s Funniest Home Videos and win $10,000?” Not exactly the response I had imagined and I immediately got the “Where did my parenting skills veer so off course?” ache in my stomach. It is times like these that make me think that the age of YouTube has created a generation of kids whose sense of reality is so off kilter you are tempted to unplug the TV and the computer and throw them out the window.

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock the last few weeks, the latest reality TV cautionary tale has played itself out in the news under the name The Balloon Boy Hoax. The nationally covered circus has not only given the wing-nut father the notoriety that he so desperately wanted (I nearly stabbed my eardrum with a pencil when I heard his self written/producer/performed theme song for his proposed reality show), but reduced his little boy to the puke on camera sensation that was interrogated by Wolf Blitzer in the SITUATION ROOM! His parents hatched a plan to their American Dream by creating a giant ghetto Mylar balloon, faking a call to 911 and forcing their kid to lie about it. Only in America.

Maybe it is I that is out of touch. Perhaps the living in reality ship has sailed and I am left on a deserted island of desired normalcy.

A Bully with a Marker

Days with no surprises are good. Wake up early, check. Take car, ferry and subway to work, check. Go home and have dinner with the family, check. Fall asleep after watching The Daily Show, check. This may seem too routine for some, but when you have four kids and a super OCD complex, days like this mean a good night of sleep and one less potential ulcer.

A day with a surprise like your daughter coming home from school with a ruined dress covered with marker graffiti on the back is bad, especially if said daughter has already mentioned that the devil spawn that did it has been bullying her and if said daughter spent 6 months last year crying everyday at school. Paul, as ever, was completely cool about it. “I’ll send a note to her teacher tomorrow.” I dropped my bag and started plotting a Kill Bill like revenge scenario.

Lest anyone is worried, I really didn’t consider physical harming my daughter’s first grade classmate, but I did decide to take the matter in person to Natalie’s teacher and principal. Paul winced as he saw my mental wheels in motion. “Snitches get stitches. If the kids find out she ratted someone out, they’re gonna mess with her.” I was unconvinced. She’s six after all, not in the mob.

I went with my gut and made my way to the school the next day. As I passed throngs of children, construction paper Halloween projects and little people furniture, I thought I would lose my nerve. Kids do naughty things all the time, don’t they? Then I thought about the long, thick stripes of indelible marker all over Natalie’s ruined dress and my resolve came back.

Natalie’s teacher reacted to the story and the dress with a mix of coolness and ambivalence so I turned on my heel and marched straight to the principal’s office. The principal, thankfully, is the kind of woman every parent would want running a school; approachable, articulate, a good listener and above all, someone who believes in accountability. After she assured me that she would be speaking to the parents of the devil spawn, I immediately felt better about the world.

Mind you, a day with a surprise like winning the lottery would definitely not suck. Now, if I could just find a really good stain remover to get the ink out of the dress.

One Gift Each

One gift each. That’s what we decided and that’s what we’re sticking with. As tempted as I was to do a Dora/Diego styled bash with tons of presents, I resisted and here we are, the morning of the Aidan and Paulina’s birthday, and we have two gifts wrapped in eco-friendly pillow cases. I wonder if their three year-old brains will recognize the wrapping from Christmas?

Unfortunately, I won’t be here to watch them open their presents. It’s a little past 6am and I have to leave for work. I told Paul it would be cruel and unusual punishment to make a huge deal about their birthday and make them wait all day to open their presents. There are times when I wonder if this joint birthday thing will someday lead to heavy angst and teenager demands for therapy. Then, I think back to the days when getting a box of crayons for my birthday was a big deal and I realize that Paulina and Aidan are doing just fine.

Giving In to Pet Demands

So it seems that my resolve to not acquiesce to the demands of my children is greatly diminished by exhaustion. At a particularly weak moment after being away for nine days, my kids complained that I have for I quote, “200 million years” promised they could get a pet. Last month, Paul had batted around the idea of getting them a rabbit. But after careful consideration, we held to our plan to not get any pets until the twins are out of diapers.

Natalie has been particularly adamant about getting a pet. She has asked for butterflies, worms, camels, llamas, ostriches, horses, turtles, monkeys and most recently cats. One would think that a cat would be the easiest. Unfortunately, since I could die from anaphylactic shock from my extreme allergy to 99% of cats, this is impossible. After feeling like a totally rotten mother, I woke up yesterday wanting more than anything to give my kids something to care for, to see if they had the stamina to step up to a dog.

We settled for Brookstone’s Frog-O-Sphere. The kit comes with two miniature frogs, a snail, live rock, and a bamboo plant all in a conveniently packaged to hopefully keep the kids from killing every thing included. It’s a self-cleaning ecosystem that just requires that the kids remember to feed the frogs twice each week. So far, they are enchanted. Max and Aidan named their frogs Snoopy and Spike while Natalie and Paulina settled for Sally and Sally (since Paulina seems to copy everything that Natalie does). Natalie nearly dozed off on a chair trying to “watch” her baby frogs fall asleep and told me I was the best mommy and she loved me two million three hundred sixty five much. Sometimes giving in to guilt feels pretty good.

Unglamorous with a Side of Bed Bug Paranoia

For whatever reason, my husband thinks traveling for business is glamorous. His fallacy consists of expensive dinners, bottomless drinks, posh hotel rooms, sleeping in and of course, lots of time to see the sights. For anyone that does travel for business you know that this could not be further from than the truth.

The reality is that business travel is the opposite of glamorous; schlepping from airport to hotel to endless meetings, getting in taxis with mildly insane drivers, bad hotel food, even worse airplane food, living out of a suitcase (for the ironing impaired, it’s tragic!) and did I mention the bed bugs?

In the last year, I have heard first hand accounts (not the garden variety urban legend from a friends of a friend’s cousin) of colleagues and friends coming home with the gift that keeps on giving, bed bugs! These nasty little creatures suck on your blood in the middle of the night leaving nasty bumps and on top of that, can hitch a ride on your clothing or your suitcase and come home with you only to infest nearly anything in your home with legions of its offspring.

Yes, my friends, business travel is the least glamorous thing in the world. Heap on top of all of this a healthy portion of mommy guilt and you will understand why during moments of weakness, I am compelled to buy guilt gifts like San Antonio Longhorn Caramel Pecan Cow Patties.