Potty

Phew! This is the third post for the day! I am feeling very ambitious today, and apparently B knows it because he is making all sorts of sweet surprise messes for me to clean up.

I often wonder about how things run in other people's homes. For instance: is it only my kid who can't seem to keep the pee in the toilet? Honestly I'm not really complaining because with Brenner, it's a feat in itself for him to actually urinate in his potty in the first place.

Let me set the stage for this morning's incident.

Upon awakening, Brenner goes to his door in a trance-like state and knocks. You see, he can't open the door from the inside because it is is child proof. There are many reasons for this-use your imagination. So I go let him out and try to be upbeat because he is in a very vulnerable state in the morning. I never know if I'm going to open the door to a little beast-child or an angel-boy.

This morning was a little tough to decipher, so I say "goodmorning", and he immediately requests breakfast. After snarfing down his eggs, I tell him "Ok Brenner, it's time to go potty." To which he starts to melt down.

I carry him to the bathroom and pull the pajamas off his listless body and plop him down on the bright green potty chair. He stands up and starts crying and wants me to hold him. At this point I am getting frustrated and worried. He drank a lot of water before bed lastnight and woke up dry this morning, so my deductive reasoning tells me that he has to go and I'm also thinking it's a "right now" thing. So I'm trying to stay calm and stand him up to put him back on the chair and he is sad and wants to collapse and all of a sudden he starts peeing as if it's totally involuntary and he stops crying long enough to watch. He is facing me, of course, and I get a nice huge pee spot on my robe before I can come to grips with what is happening and I turn him towards his potty. I'm not a man and he has never peed standing up like this before so he starts spraying the wall, the potty, and the floor like a fire hose going out of control. So I quickly "direct" things and he finishes in the bowl of the potty.

He jumps up and down and shouts with joy "I did it! Let's put a sticker on the chart! Lightning McQueen!" and he is happy and gleeful whilst I sit on the floor next to all the urine.

I'm not really sure how he held all that liquid in his body but there was what seemed like gallons on the floor and all over the place. Wash, wipe, spray, sigh.

I think potty training is the worst thing I have done as a parent so far.