good job, mommy. good job.

Hi folks,

It's four a.m. which is indicative of my heartburn tonight. Rather than spin in silence I decided to enlist ye innocent readers. I used to post stories here, you know? Now it seems like random and/or bizarre lists punctuated by anxiety. We'll get back to the narrative flow at some point, I promise.

On that note, I neglected to post anything about our adventures in potty training. Khubz usually stays dry at night, often tells us when she goes potty, likes to come in the bathroom with us when we go. . .It seemed like November might be the right time to try. . . Or. . .not. We, perhaps, got things off on the wrong foot when we set the kitchen timer to go off every 20 minutes. NO. NO POTTY. NO!! NOOOOO POTTY!!!!!!

Okay, wailing was not the association we were trying to create. Frequent calls to my mother got us the advice that we (Scully & I) were clearly not ready, even if Khubz was (and it didn't sound like she was.) We tried for several days. Elmo and Dora panties. Shrieking at daycare as well. Reports from Funk over at Growing a Pair that Khubz was crying on the potty. (Even though Funk did offer to hold her hand--sweet girl!) Khubz does have strong bladder control because she'd simply refuse to potty for the 9 hours she was at daycare.

At home, she'd come in the bathroom with me and I'd sit on the potty. "What do we think of?" "Agua." Khubz would report. And we'd talk about rivers and rain and suddenly we'd hear the sound of Mommy peeing!! And we'd both open our mouths in an excited wow!! And then it would be Khubz's turn on the potty and she'd sit and say "ssssss" to imitate the sound. Toilet paper frivolities. High ratio of hand soap to water for joyous, bubbly hand washing. And then she'd run out the bathroom and piss all over the living room. Immediately.

Our only "success" came when she was butt naked, squatted down to poop and I carried her, pooping all the way, from her room to the bathroom. I just felt like we needed to declare some kind of victory, you know? Success in the form of picking up a trail of poops from one room to the next is actually a pretty hollow victory.

Well, fuck this, we said. Who needs the stress? We've got plenty ourselves. So a temporary goodbye to the Elmo and Dora panties. Welcome back diapers! The lasting impact that potty training has had on Khubz? When I potty Khubz will come up to me afterwards, pat my shoulder and say, "good job, mommy. good job."

I'll take it.

Okay, that story actually helped.
And you all do know that I've already polished the kitchen cabinets, right?

In other news, we got in to the townhouse in iowa today and it is all going to be okay. I think the space will work better than I had imagined, we should be able to get most of our stuff into storage in the basement there. Khubz had a great time running absolutely wild around the empty house with her cousins. Most fabulously, we dropped off cleaning supplies and my family are taking shifts over the next week or so to get the place ready for us. (i love them. i love love them.)

Scully has just arrived back in Kansas and Khubz & I head there tomorrow. That means I should really take a couple tums to knock out the rest of the heartburn and sort out my head/list/anxiety tomorrow when there are trained professionals (aka the family) available to help me.

Okay. Good night.