The Blogfathers

Usually my son makes it through the day keeping the day’s underwear dry. For a little while now, he’s been making mad dashes to the bathroom to unload. Just last weekend I witnessed two such dashes and I thought, Hallelujah! (Before this, he needed occasional strongly worded “suggestions” that now might be a good time to go potty.)

But every once in a while we have a setback. My long-suffering wife has had to deal with 95% of them. (We dads at work often have it easy — although I wouldn’t mind switching places.) The missus calls me at work to vent. Yesterday Luke decided to crap on his bedroom floor. Just What is going through the boy’s mind during this activity?! He KNOWS this is wrong. In fact afterwards, he left his room, shut the door, and told Mama, “Don’t go in my room.” We’ve learned to dread these words. They are of course easily translated into parentese as “Go into my room immediately in your HazMat suit.”

Then, after clean-up, my wife has seque right into our daughter’s “Code Brown” clean-up. Kajsa is 14 months old and squirmier than a bag full of kittens fighting over catnip. Changing her at all is a struggle. Changing a Code Brown challenges your dexterity And your nasal passages. If it were summertime I suppose we’d just let her roam around outside naked and just periodically hose her down. (They love that, you should try it.)

– I just got off the phone with the boy. He proudly told me about his latest potty success and that he’s now licking a Valentine’s Day lollipop he got at preschool. He’s getting there.

Now we just have to work on the girl. If only she’d chill out for 30 seconds on the changing table. If only the little tricks we used to get Luke to chill out at the same age worked for her too. But it’s never that easy is it?

Strunz