The Poop Saga Continues

Yes, you read me right. It's been another couple months since I first blogged the shit and piss storm that is our attempt to potty train our daughter, and things have not yet resolved.

Or maybe they have. We had a breakthrough this evening. But I'll get to that.

Okay, so there have been steps in the right direction. We put Roo back in pull-ups and after a couple of weeks of a carefully calibrated combination of a. pretending we didn't care where the hell she peed, and b. giving her stickers on a chart that added up to gummy worms every time she did pee, she started keeping the pull-ups dry again. But she resolutely refused to poop in the potty. And we tried to pretend we didn't care. But that was hard. Too hard. Both my Old Man and I found ourselves encouraging and cajoling and remonstrating.

And pretty soon, it wasn't just that she wouldn't poop in the potty. Now she just wouldn't poop. At all. She just held it.

Now, no one can hold it forever. But she held it as long as she could. And finally it would come out at some time when she was relaxed and caught off her guard. Where and when is Roo relaxed and off her guard? Two places: when she's in a deep sleep and when she's in the middle of a warm bath.

Cue the bone-chilling theremin music.

Yes, it soon came to pass that my Old Man and I were alternately getting up in the middle of the fucking night to change poopy diapers. Or fishing turds out of our toddler's bath water.

Yes! I know it's horrible! It's a fucking nightmare.

So now we're afraid to bathe the poor girl, and we go to bed each night with the uneasy feeling that we'll be woken mid-REM to deal not just with a poopy diaper, but with the big-ass poopy diaper of a small child who's been holding it for three days.

Desperate measures were called for. We had tried coaxing. We had tried incentive programs: Dora undies, promises of double scooped ice cream cones. Now it was time to try tough love.

We finally told Roo that she would not get dessert 'til she pooped in the potty. That we would sit at the table and eat dessert without her until such time as she pooped in the damn potty. (I am not proud of this measure.) We knew she was capable! She'd done it for three weeks straight back in early summer! And we were desperate. Desperate.

Okay, I know I said I'd tell you about tonight's breakthrough, but I'm getting too worked up remembering the middle-of-the-night and middle-of-the-bath horrors. I need to go watch a Jane Austen movie for a bit, escape to a world where no one poops.

I'll be back to tell the rest soon.

Whippy Cinema

We had family movie night last night here at Casa Oral Hygiene, watching the new film of the Wimpy Kid diaries, which O. has giggled his way through this summer. Roo is still under her pronunciation misapprehension with regard to the title of those books, and so all day yesterday, excited at the prospect of movie night (and especially, I think at seeing a version of the stories her brother has talked so much about lately), she kept asking me, "Are we gonna watch Diarrhea of a Whippy Kid?"

I didn't think it was possible for that Roo-ism to sound more squalid, but somehow with the verb "watch" preceding it, it does in fact become ... more squalid. Not only is there a kid around here who has diarrhea of the "whippy" variety, but we're actually going to watch said diarrhea. (Then of course, I find myself wondering what exactly that would entail. It seems to suggest watching the whippy kid in the act of... Okay. I realize I'm taking this too far. I'll stop.)

The movie was funny, and I'd recommend it as great family fare.* But I thought the books were actually much funnier, and I wouldn't see the movie 'til you've read at least the first couple of books. (What do you expect? I'm an English teacher.)



* There's one scene that might be scary for little kids - a dark woods on Halloween with a local scary story attached. Roo was unfazed, but I think O. would've been freaked out at her age.