Dear Everyone Who Encouraged Me to Potty Train My Children,
My kids are four years old now and they are finally potty trained.
(Yeah, it took me two entire years to accomplish potty training. I consider it a long term goal.)
Yes, it is wonderful that I am saving buttloads of money on pull-ups and diapers. Yes, I appreciate the freedom of not having to change 8 - 20 diapers a day. (Twins, people.) Yes, I am glad they are no longer the only children in their class who aren’t toilet trained and that this is probably a huge step towards getting them out of the house and marrying them off.
I had been warned about boys peeing all over the toilet seat.
It wasn’t so much that I didn’t believe you. It is just that Gabe is really good about aiming (as far as I can tell) and apparently so were my Dad and brother. I don’t ever remember it being a big problem.
Even now, it isn’t so much the pee on the seat. When it is your baby boy’s pee it isn’t a big deal to be wiping it off the seat. I mean - I changed his diaper for FOUR YEARS I am familiar with his urine. The problem is the smell.
My kids entire bathroom smells like pee.
A lot.
It isn’t even that Ian is so bad at aiming. It is that he is really bad at focusing on the task at hand.
The other day he came out of the bathroom and informed me that he had a little accident. No, he didn’t pee in his pants. He peed all over the shower curtain.
How does one accidentally pee all over the shower curtain?
In short, while I am thrilled that my children are now housebroken I would like to warn all other mothers of boys who are not yet potty trained.
The Goon Squad and I were on our way to the grocery store today when I found myself in one of those predicaments.
Somebody was tailgating me.
I don’t mean the awesome party before the football game with beer and bratwurst. I mean the kind where some punk in a tiny little midlife crisis Saturn Sky was all up in my business. He was waaaaaay to close. I could hardly see him in my rear view mirror.
So I did what any would would do. I slowed down.
We played that game for about one minute and then - in a wide, but only one lane in each direction street - he passed me on the right.
I was pissed. For one thing he turned into a shopping center parking lot about 1/10th of a mile later but also, and more importantly, my children were in the car.
Then I turned into the lioness.
I used to be a very confrontational person. I used to pick fights with strangers. I mean, only if I had a reason, but I was never one to let things go. Then I had twins and I learned about patience.
So anyway, I was mad at this douche who put our lives in danger so he could be cool and pass me.
So I followed his little green convertible ass into the parking lot. And I followed him to his spot.
And then I blocked him into his parking spot and rolled down my window.
Then I waited while he put up the top to his car.
“Hey! That was really dangerous, and I want you to know I have two little kids in my car and you could have killed us.”
“I…uh… sorry. I late to flight.”
“You could have seriously hurt somebody.”
“I sorry. I lose my flight.”
“You are late to for flight? So you stopped at the Micro Center?
He nodded.
“You have plenty of time to put the top up on your car but you had to PASS ME IN MY LANE? ARE YOU CRAZY? YOU ARE GOING TO KILL SOMEBODY DRIVING LIKE THAT!”
He apologized again, but what a jackass. What I didn’t tell him was that my Minivan could have smashed his little plastic car and had I been alone in my big steel vehicle I would have attempted to run him off the road.
Because I am PMSing. And that would have been hilarious.
But I seriously think what made me so mad was that the kids were in the car with me. He risked the lives of my children. It is my job to protect them and I feel like I did that today.
And I know I am a good mother because I didn’t go key his car after he went into the store.
You know how when you go to birthday parties for little kids your children get parting gifts?* I went to a birthdayparty this weekend where the adults got parting gifts too, and my parting gift was a baggie full of ham.
Seriously. A sandwich bag with ham in it.
(Curse my broken camera!)
It wasn’t a joke either. This is what happens when vegetarians serve cold cuts to guests.
Or maybe if you go to a party where the mom and the dad are both bloggers the real parting gift was blog fodder.
Either way I challenge you to come up with a more bizarre take-away from a party. (And no fair saying laundry nuts.) It has to be real, and bonus points if it was something consumable.
Side note: I could not find a picture of ham in a baggie on Google Image, but I did find this handy Pork Cut Chart.
* Seriously. Not necessary. You don’t have to bribe my kids to come over to your house and eat cake. Plus they will probably just trash your place. It is really nice, but you shouldn’t feel obligated to do it.
I did something yesterday that I had never done before.
For the first time in my entire life I mowed the lawn.
(No. That is not a euphemism.)
I mowed the yard and I have a couple of things I would like to say about it. 1) It was both way easier and way harder than I expected. 2) Why did we buy a lawn mower that wasn’t self-propelled?
For those of you who have also lasted this long without ever mowing here is how I would describe it: It is a lot like shaving except you sweat more.
So now I am not sure if I should be proud that I can mow the grass or embarrassed that it took me 35 years to do it for the first time.
It is so easy to feel good at BlogHer. You see people who you admire and who admire you back. You get to hang out with internet rock stars. People want to take pictures with you. You get interviewed and put on television.
A conference like that can be such a high.
But then you come home and you are just a regular person again.
Or worse.
The other day I was on the phone with one of my internet bosses and talking about promoting one of our posts. She said she was going to Twitter it again and I said “Yeah, just re-tweet it and more people will see it and blah blah blah blah“.
Because I talk like that.
Anyway, when I got off the phone my husband was just staring at me.
He was staring at me with his arms crossed.
Me: What?
Him: Re-Tweet?
Me: Yeah, you know. When you put something up on Twitter again.
Him: You are such a fucking dork.
And you know what? He is kind of right. Sure I felt cool around 1000 other women bloggers but in the grand scheme of things I am still sort of an internet dork. It is just like when I got into the Madrigal Group in college. It was awesome but I was still a choir geek.
Oh well, I may not be getting any calls from any trend setting magazines asking me what I’m wearing or what new music I like but I am having a damn good time doing this.
This happens to me every year after BlogHer. I’ve got nothing. It isn’t that I’m burnt out… it is just that I already said all of the things that I have to say. I just said them to you guys in person.
Plus I can’t seem to readjust to Eastern Standard Time.
I suppose I should do my Road Trip/BlogHer recap but I am still unable to organize my thoughts properly. I guess after 14 states in six days, trying to hang out with 1000 of my closest internet friends and then eating a $500 meal at The French Laundry I don’t feel too bad about not being able to focus.
Let me just give you a few highlights of my BlogHer experience.
- I broke my camera on the first night in San Francisco. That’s right. You heard me. I dropped it on the floor at the SV Moms Group party. The next morning at breakfast I tweeted my dismay. Not having a camera at BlogHer is like not having beer at a football game. Unacceptable. About five minutes later the lovely Moosh in Indy walked up to me and said “I have an extra camera if you want to borrow it.” So thanks Casey and thanks twitter. Seriously, who is that nice?
- Sitting in the “Naked Blogging” panel discussion I accidentally tripped a guy (trying to get out of his way) and then Angela (trying to help him not fall) grabbed his upper thigh. I hope we didn’t scare him off from attending future BlogHer sessions. I swear we didn’t plan it ahead of time.
- As I was missing my MamaPop deadline - well, as I would have been missing my MamaPop deadline had I been in my normal time zone - I ran into one of my bosses in the airport. It turned out that Amy and I were on the same flight. So, as embarrassing as it is to actually be face to face with the person you are currently supposed to be writing a post for, all is forgiven when you are on the same delayed flight.
- If you are in the BlogHer internet cafe and working on your post for BlogHer there is no need for a thesaurus. You can just yell out “I need another word for exaggeration” and the four closest people all have really good answers.
So what have I learned? My BlogHer friends are just as cool in real life as they are online and seriously - try not to miss deadlines when you are in the same building as your editor.
In case you haven’t been reading my road trip blog or if you are new here I arrived in San Francisco yesterday for the annual BlogHer conference.
I am having a wonderful time and all that but I really want to tell you a quick story.
One of the many blogs that I write for is DC Metro Moms Blog. Last night I went to a party for all of the SV Moms Group blogs.
As soon as I walked in I saw a woman that looked a lot like somebody I knew in college. I thought “Hey, that lady looks like Alexis”. Then somebody called her Alexis.
I went up and re-introduced myself. I hadn’t seen Alexis in 13 years. We were in a sorority together in college.
I am in San Francisco. I live outside of Washington DC. I went to college in Orlando. She lives in L.A. What are the odds that we would ever run across each other again?
It really is a small world.
* Yes, I know we are doing it backwards. It has been a long time since college and I am way to lazy to try to find a program that will reverse the picture.
I used to be a very confrontational person. I used to pick fights with strangers. I mean, only if I had a reason, but I was never one to let things go. Then I had twins and I learned about patience.
