Diaper doom

Last week I attempted to potty train Amber. Again. It was a disaster. Again. I thought about listing all of the things I did right to illustrate the extent of the disaster, but I'm just so worn out I don't want to talk about it. Here is a trio of journal entries from last week to illustrate the issue instead.

Character sketch: Amby, living the piano lesson life: front seat, kids' French app, "cheesy wheezies" snack, pink rubber boots, homemade necklace, and don't forget that gold sparkly crown. Why do I ever even think I can attempt to convince/persuade/force this headstrong wild child to do anything she doesn't want to do? 

Tuesday, May 1, 2018
IT ALL STARTED WHEN I DROPPED THE SOAP. Or possibly when Jeff's congested loud breathing woke me up repeatedly all night until 5am, when I lost the ability to fall back to sleep. I can only fall asleep so many times each night! I ran 5 miles this morning even though I wasn't planning on running. I was up early-early, so why not? Sigh. I'm tired.

Before school, Amber and Rose had simultaneous meltdowns over two unrelated things (Legos and piano practice). It was loud. I actually took a video because it was so...THEM. While I was getting Amber dressed, I suddenly decided to put her in undies and see what happened. Since she just finished pooping in her diaper, I figured it was as good a time as any. I know she's smart enough to figure this out, but she just doesn't care! I haven't put her in undies in nearly a year, so I figured we'd see how she does this time. UGH. I got some juice at the sore and gave Amber plenty of drinks, and she actually peed on the potty when I told her to--TWICE! We were on a roll.

Later this morning (post-school rush), Amber went outside with me while I swept the garage. Our busted garage door was finally fixed yesterday so I finally got to sweep out all of the debris that blew into it while it was stuck halfway open. Predictably, Amber kept riding her trike and scooter right in the patch I was trying to sweep. Eventually I finished and it was satisfying. Amber begged and begged to go on a walk so she could play in the little creek out back, so I dug out my big sun hat and went out with her. Sigh. It was a gorgeous day--65 and sunny, blue skies, IDEAL outside weather. I just felt tired. But I spent an hour-plus trailing around after Amber while she explored the length of the drainage creek, helping her out of the more difficult situations she got herself into. She stood still too long in some very goopy mud and got stuck past her boot ankles in the mud. When I lifted her out, the boots stayed behind. That was the beginning of the end of her cleanliness. She also tripped and fell in the mud and eventually filled her boots with water. At that point she wanted to go home. I had hoped to sit in the shade and read a book while Amber played, but she kept wandering far and I ended up only reading 3-4 pages during our whole hour-plus excursion.

After a successful post-lunch potty pee, Amber settled down to watch Moana. Partway into the movie, I glanced over and saw Amber laying in a weird position on the carpet. Then I saw the poop. It was everywhere: her dress, undies, legs, hands, even a little on the carpet. I carted her off to the bathroom and plunked her into the bathtub with a short irritated lecture about poop going in the potty. I donned my rubber gloves, stripped Amber to her skin, and began the arduous disgusting process of cleaning poop off of her. After I got it out of her clothes, I sprayed her down with the shower (we have a shower head on a hose--THE BEST for kids), hoping only to wash her body, not her hair (washing curly hair is an arduous process). Then I looked up and there was poop in her hair. This day is my enemy. Curly hair is no fun to wash. Amber cried the whole time I was removing poop from her hair and body crevices. At last she was clean. Now what?

More undies? A pull-up? Or the dread cloth diaper? I was completely at a loss. At last I settled on the cloth diaper. Now what again? Let her resume her movie? That seemed like it would make pooping her pants totally acceptable. But turning it off meant a long cry-a-thon and my patience was already thin. I turned off the movie, and Amber cried for 12 minutes straight. NOW WHAT??

Naptime. I read her a story and put her to bed. Am I just terrible at potty training or is Amber just hard, or is potty training just awful no matter what? I'm thinking it's all of the above. I'm bad at it, Amber is hard, AND potty training is horrible. Will it end in success or defeat this time? WAHHHHH!

 Amber likes to steal Jay's and Rose's Lego creations to play with and she gets very upset when the big kids take them back.

 Stuck in the mud: this was HILARIOUS. I was laughing my head off watching Amber before helping her.

 Pulling herself up by her bootstrap. Problem: she couldn't pull the other boot out too without sinking the first foot back into the mud.

 Rescued.

 I tried leaning up against an irrigation wheel to read while Amber scampered around, but she would not leave me alone. Also: I feel equal parts nerdy and comfy in my massive sun hat. 

I found a lumpy tree stump, put my Kindle cover on it for padding, and settled down with my book. This is where I sat for a vast four-to-six minutes and read a few pages before Amber filled her boots with mud and water, got her dress wet, and asked to go home.

Thursday, May 3, 2018
This afternoon was busy! I had an eye appointment and got my pupils dilated at 1:30pm and as a result wore my sunglasses nonstop until 7pm. Right when the kids got home from school, we jumped into the car and drove over to the high school to watch the home track meet. I sat with sweet Sister Bos who came to support kids in our ward, and it was so fun to chat with her and get to know her better. I want to be like her when I grow up. I kept one eye on the kids playing while we talked. At one point about half an hour in, I had to go settle a kid dispute and I discovered that Amber had pooped in her undies. I almost left, but we had just gotten there! So I let it go. Amber ran around in  public with poopy undies for nearly 2 hours! Several eloquent emojis come to mind.

After the 3200 race ended, I gathered the kids to leave. Halfway back to the car, I paused in an empty soccer field, peeled off Amby's poopy undies, and chucked them in a nearby trashcan, where they floated on six inches of accumulated water down in the bottom. She was wearing a dress so her bare booty was covered. At the car, I wiped her messy booty with lots of wet wipes and put her in a pull-up. It was hot in the car and I was sweating while cleaning up poop with nowhere to wash my hands. Blech.

Since it was 6:40pm by the time Amby was all cleaned up and buckled in, we zipped through the McDonald's drive thru for Happy meals as the kids' combined dinner and track treat. Problem: McDonald's got our simple triple Happy meal order WRONG. I pulled back through the drive thru window to ask for a do-over and they had me pull over to wait. Nobody came. Finally an employee came out to deliver someone else's food and asked what I needed, whereupon I told her: a hamburger, a go-gurt, and ketchup. (We were given chicken nuggets and no go gurt or ketchup). More waiting. Finally, they gave us the right food. We could have saved $9 (haha), gone home, and grabbed quick sandwiches for dinner in the time we sat waiting in the McDonald's parking lot! Sigh. By that point, it was 7pm and I figured the track meet had to be over, so I called Jeff and offered him a ride home. Back to the high school (very close to Macdow), and we picked Jeff up. Whew!

We got Amb in bed quickly and let Jay and Rose do their own thing. Rose took a shower since she was sweaty from playing. Jay went to his room to read. It all felt too easy, and now I am realizing why: we forgot to have family prayer. Sigh. Oops. At least we had it this morning! In the car sitting in the driveway before school! Haha, like every morning. Amber reminded us to have family prayer this morning and it was so sweet!

Jeff and I enjoyed the pulled pork I cooked in the crock pot all day for a late dinner while watching an episode of Star Trek. Now, I want to go read!

Daddy-daughter Wii game: Just Dance

Saturday, May 5, 2018
I woke Amber up from her nap today at 4:20pm. It took her nearly 10 minutes to wake up. She kept rolling over and dozing off again. I didn't rush her because I love looking at my sleeping babies' relaxed peaceful faces. While I watched her sleep, all of my frustration, resentment, and confusion from this difficult week of attempted potty training melted away. I saw a sweet little child who was so trusting and adorable, I forgave her for all that stubbornness. Finally I said "Amber, do you want to watch a movie?" She popped up immediately and said "Kai watch Sleeping Aurora?" (could I watch Sleeping Beauty). We went downstairs and popped in the video tape. She came up during all of the scary parts and told me about them with such an intent little face and voice, again I was flooded with love and peace about potty training her. She is still so little in so many ways, and she will come around to using the toilet eventually. I re-realized that making the potty into a battle like it has been this week will not work at all. It's ok to slow down, I thought. It's ok. And just like that, I was able to let go of "she should be potty trained by now; she's 3.5 years old and big for her age!" Oh well. Patience.

Mother's Day: a plea

For the past few weeks, I have been practicing Mother's Day songs for the primary kids to sing to their moms in church on Mother's Day. My piano practice sessions are always punctuated by near constant kid-interruptions of varying levels of intensity. I employ all types of evasive maneuvers to get through songs, from ignoring the current badgering child until I finish playing a song (often inspiring note-derailing arm-tugging or louder demanding from the child), all the way to telling them to go do whatever works for them while I practice (risky permission to give a kid). The fluffy idealistic mom-songs overlaying the reality of my often less-than-graceful handling of intense children has caused me to ponder why I do not enjoy Mother's Day or church primary mother's day songs very much.

A few weeks ago when I first tried putting my finger on what I dislike about lyrics such as "dear mother, all flowers remind me of you", I decided it was how non-universal that statement is. Flowers in no way remind me of my mother. Maybe lilacs--maybe--but honestly, flowers do not even make an appearance in my top ten memories of my mom. If I were to pick one item that reminds me of my mom the most, it would most definitely not be meadows of clover. It would be books: libraries, bookstores, bookshelves, and stories. I even composed new lyrics to "I Often Go Walking" in an attempt to soothe my ruffled sanity with humor while I practiced playing that tricky sappy song endlessly on the piano.

I Often Go Reading

I often go reading in rooms full of bookshelves; 

and I gather armfuls of books used and new. 

I gather the stories the library over, 

Dear Mother all bookshelves remind me of you.

Oh mother, I give you my love with each blog post; 

To give forth sweet stories a whole lifetime through; 

for if I love stories and reading and writing,

I learned how to love them, Dear Mother, from you.

That is much better--not my best poetry, but I never claimed to be a poet. After writing those lyrics, I thought I had found balm for my anti-mother's-day-ness at last. But while I was practicing piano this morning (and navigating the inevitable child-interruptions from Jay on down), another realization hit me: these Mother's Day songs are all about such superficial fluff and nonsense, like flowers and bluebirds and pretty faces. Mothers are more than just flower-loving quietly-smiling pretty faces! SO MUCH MORE! Look at the process of becoming a mother! Is there anything calm, demure, or pretty about pushing what amounts to a watermelon out between your legs? I THINK NOT.

Moving forward past the naked difficulties of becoming a mother, what about the endless routine of poopy children? They always poop. They always have to poop at the most inconvenient times and in the most inconvenient places. It is a cruel loop, dealing with all of that poop. The list goes on: crumbs, messes, tantrums, stubbornness, screaming, wrestling, etc. Is there anyone who deals with that daily onslaught of raw emotion with her "gently smiling face" never slipping? I THINK NOT.

Motherhood is more than the sum of its parts: watermelons, poop, crumbs, drama, and tantrums. I will be the first to tell stand and say with 100% conviction that it is ALL WORTH IT. The worthiness of the cause for full-time motherhood is not at stake here. Thank goodness for all of the glowing moments of aching beauty (however fleeting they may be) that are woven in and out between all of the crumbs, poop, drama, and tantrums. Sometimes a few seconds of cuteness, sympathy, or assistance are all it takes to help me pick up my scattered wits and move forward with motherhood.

I am not suggesting that verses about poop, crumbs, and emotional roller coasters be added to the mother's day songs; I am simply illustrating the point that the current words in the mother's day songs mostly talk about loving mom because she's pretty and sweet and gentle and kind all the time. Can't moms be pretty, sweet, gentle, and kind while also being strong, courageous, intelligent, and talented? Can we accept that not all moms are all of these things?

How about we start expressing love to our mothers not for what they ARE but for what they DO?

Flowers are a sweet simple gift, I agree. I love receiving flowers. But to truly show love to a MOTHER, who does everything from birthing babies to potty training them (and still loving them after that nightmare) and beyond, it makes more sense to help shoulder her burden rather than shower her with sneeze-inducing flowers. Sweep the kitchen floor without being asked. Clean up that messy room. Scrub the toilet. Diffuse a kid argument. Walk the Amber. Do some laundry and fold it. Show your love for her by giving her a break--however brief--from the monotony of all of her background labors of love.

"But that's not the kind of gift you can send in the mail or set out on the kitchen table on mother's day!" So write your mom a kind note and set it out on the table with some flowers. Then get to work. Because if you don't do the work, it will fall to her. Giving mom a "day off" on Mother's Day when you don't do the work in her place really just gives mom a Monday from Hades with triple the work (since housework never simply doubles when it is left undone).

If all families always willingly helped out at home and always made sure to SHOW the mother love for what she does by helping her do it, Mother's Day as we know it would cease to exist. We wouldn't feel the need to set aside a special day to honor mothers because we would know that we have been honoring these extraordinary women all along.

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*Disclaimer A: I know that not all mothers stay at home full time, but I did not include working moms in my mom-life descriptions because I have no firsthand experience with the needs of a working mom.

*Disclaimer B: This entire editorial is written from my personal point of view and is limited by my personal experiences, just like every piece of writing ever.

*Disclaimer C: While I believe that showing appreciation for what a person does is far more important than showing love for their more superficial attributes, everyone feels love in a different way. Love languages: google it.

*Disclaimer D: The actual words that the kids sing on Mother's Day are secondary to their sweet singing--I have always been heartwarmed by cute children singing love to their mothers. It is sweet.

*Disclaimer E: If you are not LDS, my angst at mother's day songs is probably incomprehensible. Suffice it to say that the LDS Children's Songbook has not been updated in my lifetime. Also of note, at church on mother's day, the kids usually all go up and sing a song or two about mothers.

*Disclaimer F: In regards to my own mother dearest, I am not, nor have I ever been perfect at living up to all of these ideals that I just preached. In spite of my strongest opinions, I recognize that all we can do is our best, and love recognizes that effort.

My mom is the best.

April misc.

Wow, I am feeling very uninterested in writing this week. Any time I have lots of conversations with friends/family, it saps my desire to write. I guess I only have so many words in me, and I have to "spend" them wisely if I want to have anything in writing! Yesterday Amber and I met friends at the park and stayed for almost two hours talking. It was so pleasant to be out in the sunshine with adults to talk to while the kids played. I talked a lot! I didn't feel entirely socially fried afterwards but I definitely do not have any verbal energy to work off now. I like writing so much that when I have an unusually social day, I miss that feeling of built-up words clamoring to get out, along with the process and release of sitting and writing them down. And now, 24 hours later, I still feel blank when I sit down to write. But I wanted to get these last 50 miscellaneous pictures from April out before May progresses too far.

And how about a little daily anecdote for your amusement. In spite of my depleted word bank, I was able to dig dig deep and dredge up some words to tell The Tale of the Dropped Soap.

The Tale of the Dropped Soap 

Once upon a time, there was a king and a queen who had never possessed a spacious shower in their bathroom. Hint: this king and queen is Jeff and myself. Now, moving back to my usual less-sotrybookish vernacular: I have become accustomed to showering in narrow confined spaces, so it is usually not to much of a trial. The shower in our basement bathroom is a 30'' x 31'' almost-square, with a waist-high interior railing on three sides that reduces the standing room by 3 inches on all sides. When the hot shower water is running, the shower curtain gets sucked into the tiny shower area, further reducing the interior space to 28'' x 22'' (I actually measured this because it's easy to exaggerate discomforts). For reference, the front of my body from shoulder to shoulder straight across measures 19 inches. The shower is a tiny little plastic tube--no tile or fiberglass, just plastic. But we screwed on a good shower head and an extender to make it tall enough for our six-foot frames, so it is completely functional and bearable... 

...UNTIL THE SOAP GETS DROPPED.

Pesky slippery soap. Since we moved to this house, I have gotten extra-vigilant at holding onto the soap in the shower, but sometimes it still slides out of my grasp. This morning, the soap practically shot out of my hand, ricocheted off of the plastic shower wall, and landed right over the drain in the middle of the shower, aka the hardest place to bend over and pick it up. From my waist to the top of my head measures roughly 33 inches. Bending that 33'' half of myself forward far enough to reach the soap off of the ground right beneath me in a 28'' x 22'' space is uncomfortable! I kind of have to tip my head up, tuck my bum in, and do an awkward vertical squat, with the water jetting my wet hair into my face. Balancing in that position in the wet is precarious at best. I haven't ever actually fallen down yet, thankfully, but it always feels very possible. 

This morning, I did my practiced awkward soap-retrieval squat and finished my shower. 

And the King and Queen realized that even though their shower was too skinny, it still cleaned them as well as a bigger shower would. The End.

That is rather a lame Tale and also a lengthy explanation of this minuscule moment of my extremely first-world routine, and of course I am thankful to have access to a daily shower, but "a single grain of rice can tip the scale," and this morning it was extra tricky/amusing/frustrating to handle the dropped soap situation.

{Of course, I could take my stuff upstairs and shower in the kids' bathroom, which has a traditional bathtub/shower combo, but my bedroom is in the basement and the basement stairs are super narrow and steep (aka not so comfy to walk down while wrapped in a towel), so it's closer and more convenient to get all the way ready in the bathroom closest to my basement bedroom.} 

One Sunday in early April, all three of us girls wore navy and white dresses to church. Our unplanned coordination and the puffy clouds begged for a post-church picture.

Getting those Sunday wiggles out 

Reading stacks of Chatbooks is always a favorite activity. I love how well those simple little photo books with captions preserve my kids' memories. 

 Rose pained a rainbow at school, and Amber copied her idea. I love how much Amber loves Rose.

I discovered a 50% off online coupon and ordered the first Schwann's ice cream of my adult life during April. I have been wanting good ice cream for a while, but I detest the door-to-door Schwann's style. It's been a month since our first order and I already dread the Schwann guy's unexpected knocking on my door and then having to tell him NO again. I mean, there's only so much ice cream we can eat, and their other foods are way out of my price range.

Amber decided to eat some cereal out of the Barbie dishes one morning. 

She carefully balanced one oatmeal square on the top of each Barbie sized mug and then neatly plucked one piece at a time and ate it. 

JAY STARTED CLIPPING HIS OWN FINGERNAILS! Fingernail clipping has always been among my top three least favorite kid-care-jobs, so this moment was totally photo worthy. I still have to tell Jay when to clip his nails, but he can actually do it himself!!

Talk, talk, talk, talk. If Jay is reading, he roars at interruptions. If I am reading, he sees that as an opportunity to sit down and hold long confusing interrogative discussions. 

 More Chatbooks

Pouty Amby 

Inside Fiesta Foods. I love all of the Spanish labels. 

Fiesta Foods sells these adorable mini-tortilla presses and although I know I'd never use something so labor intensive and impractical, I want one. 

 Seriously. So cute.

Amber being Amber: stealing my smoothie one second, bringing me flowers the next. 

Apparently we snuggled a lot in April. 

One run the sun turned my pathway gold.

Two heads (Jay and Rose) in front of two computer screens, playing Minecraft. 

I bought an out-of-print D. E. Stevenson book and it was falling apart, so I decided to try my hand at book binding. 

I scraped off all of the crusty old old glue, removed the cover, stacked the pages back together, and smeared the spine in hot glue, quickly smooshing the cover back on top. My methods were not exactly sophisticated, but they held the book together long enough for me to finish reading it! (as long as I didn't open it too far)

 Not too bad!

 It fell open easily with my patchy binding.

Come on, Amazon--convert more of D. E. Stevenson's Scottish gems into Kindle books! (and stop charging $10 for the ones you have added to Kindle!) 

 One word: Reese's! I texted this picture to my friend in response to her comment that she was hiding in the laundry room eating whipped cream on strawberries or some such decadent snack, so her kids wouldn't find her and beg for the treat. I have developed a very refined neat-fingered method of unwrapping the foil on a Reese's so it is as inaudible as possible. Mom hacks.

More FOOD: during April I actually managed to gain a few pounds back after my winter of emaciating sicknesses, and it was all probably due to treats rather than healthy stuff. I don't think I am capable of gaining weight while ONLY eating healthy foods. It is so nice to be back up to my regular weight because I have more energy and I feel better all around. One night at dinner, I sighed to myself and said "I wish I was eating a hot cookie with ice cream on top." I was mostly saying what I'd rather be eating, not trying to persuade anyone to make me cookies, but Jeff promptly got up and mixed a bowl of cookie dough. We had hot cookies and ice cream within half an hour of those words escaping my lips. Jeff is truly a winner, both for making the cookies (he makes cookies better than me), and for enduring my commemorative selfie.

I MOPPED ALL OF THE HARD FLOORS. One morning I woke up with the urge to mop. Since this urge usually only comes once a year, I acted on it and mopped my heart out, dumping out two disgustingly black silty buckets of water along the way. Even a dark basement and its weird vintage linoleum deserves to be clean!

I even mopped the cement section of the basement floor for good measure. Don't those storage shelves look so zen-organized? 

A beautiful sky on my run one afternoon. 

Role reversal after a run one day. 

Cute Amby, slowly trying to eat an ibuprofen-spiked smoothie back during her tonsillectomy recovery. I'm so glad that's over! Could we please get through potty training in seven days or less and then be all done too?? Amber says: yeah right!

More tonsillectomy recovery pictures: Wub, Mommy, and water bottle--the necessities. Amber was so pathetic and clingy! She cracked a half-smile when I let her push the selfie button. 

 Jumping forward two weeks: at piano lessons, Amber was living the life, sitting in the front seat with her pink boots, homemade necklace, kids' French app, "cheesy-wheezies" for snack, and don't forget that sparkly golden crown! Before I handed over the snack, Amber held her stomach and said "my tummy hurts. I need cheesy-wheezies make it feel better." (she calls Cheezits cheesy-wheezies--I don't know where she got the idea for that, but I love it!) Later she coughed and said "es-cuse me" in her cute little inflected voice. 

In the past two weeks, Jay has finally gotten comfortable enough to invite the neighbor kids over. We have two neighbors with boys close to his age on one side of our house, and one Saturday afternoon they decided to play army men on the vintage basement linoleum. What decade is this again? After Amber stormed the scene and trampled all of the army men, the boys trooped upstairs and convinced Jeff to let them play on his virtual reality headset. Generational whiplash, anyone? 

Sunday, April 29th we went for a family walk in the mellow sunny evening right before the kids' bedtime. Everyone ran everywhere while Jeff and I ambled along hand in hand. It was a lovely end to a glorious weekend. I wrote this in my journal:

Saturday, April 28, 2018
No track meet for the first Saturday in forever! Jeff was HOME all day today and it was bliss. We sat together on the couch and talked a lot. We talked so much that I didn't feel like sitting down to write anything this afternoon. It was so nice to have time to just BE with my husband. He's my best friend and partner and true love! It is the best to feel this lucky that I got to spend all day at home with him. We didn't sit around together all day; I finished reading a book and also ran 10 miles this morning. He ran too, and helped Jay and his friends play on the VR headset. But back and forth during it all, we kept finding each other and hugging and enjoying the luxury of leisurely at-home nearness. 


This morning I left on my run from Sunnyside to Grandview around 7:15am, and within half a mile I was too hot in my long sleeves. It was chilly but the sun was shining much more warmly than I expected. So I voice to texted Jeff and asked him to bring me a tank top on his way to Grandview (he was taking the kids to the traditional Saturday morning Grampa Dan pancakes). He pulled up and parked ahead of me 15 minutes later, got out of the van, and held my tank top out like he was helping a little kid get dressed. While jogging, I peeled off my long sleeve shirt and dove into the tank top that Jeff was holding. It was awesome! I got my visor a tad tangled in the tank top, but we sorted it quickly and after handing off my long sleeves to Jeff, I was on my way again within 20 seconds. Jeff is the best! When I arrived in Grandview, I realized that my tank top was on inside out. Haha!

Sunday, April 29, 2018
I don't want this weekend to end! This weekend was a beautiful calm oasis between two storms: last week Jeff was away late at two track meets in a row, and this coming week he has two nights of parent teacher conferences. But we charged up on so much quality peaceful together time this weekend, we may just survive. We spent so much time sitting on the couch together talking and discussions possibilities. I love dreaming with my husband!

 Amber running between the dirt and the sky.

Throwing one last rock into the canal before bedtime.