Category Archives: potty training

F#$K the Dentist

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So Rocky Mountain National Park was interesting. The kids learned a lot about bears, and I learned that fun size snickers can be used as currency. A half a snickers will get you about 45 minutes of good behavior in the wilderness. Fuck the dentist and childhood diabetes, I think that’s a bargain.
Oh, and my daughter pooped next to one of the prettiest high alpine lakes in the country. Yep. About 20 feet from a line of Japanese tourists, I found myself pushing a giant load of excrement into an icy crevasse while pretending not to notice the thousands of black flies swarming me. A couple of hours later, she pooped on the footbridge next to the visitor center. Looking up at me in a panic, she said, “daddy, I gotta go to the bathroom.” Then before I could respond, she relaxed and said, “never mind.” Two little Snickers bars fell from her zip-off hiking pants shortly after. I just kicked that poop into the stream below with my foot before anyone could call Leave No Trace. Note: if you’re backpacking downstream form Bear Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park, you might want to purify your water.
I blame the potty training setbacks on the high altitude.
Some pictures.
My better half contemplating jumping after a long car ride.
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If you’re gonna poop in the woods, may as well pick a spot like this.
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Pee on this side of the road, and it goes into the Atlantic. Pee on that side of the road…
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F#@K Potty Training: A letter of apology to friends recently wronged

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Dear Friends,

First, thank you for the donuts. It was really sweet of you to invite us over on a rainy saturday morning and let our wild kids hang out with your much better behaved children. Our kids loved it!

Second, I’m really sorry my daughter pooped in your dining room.

What can I say? We’re potty training. Shit happens. Literally. I’m really sorry it happened in your house. Twice apparently. If I’m to understand the situation correctly, after we left, you found two separate balls of poop–one in the playroom and another in your dining room? Damn, that’s embarrassing.

But I can’t say that I’m surprised. As I said, we’re potty training. Twins. At the same time. The last few weeks have been a blur of urine and feces, most of which has been found in places it’s not supposed to go. I’m happy to report that they’re getting the hang of it, but there are still accidents. I know a lot of parents simply refuse to leave the house with their kids during this tough developmental period. I can understand the inclination to hunker down until the potty training storm blows over and the children have better control over their bowels, but I will not live in fear. No sir, we’ve kept to our regular schedule, running errands, visiting friends, going to gymnastics…it’s like playing Russian Roulette. You pull the trigger enough times, the gun will eventually go off.

(Which reminds me, I should probably take this opportunity to apologize to the fine folks of REI. I’m really sorry my kid peed in your tent display. And your elevator. My bad.)

Unfortunately, dear friends, the gun went off in your well-appointed dining room. This is embarrassing enough, but I was absolutely mortified when I learned that you mistook the small turd for a toy ball and picked it up with your bare hands. Man, that sucks.

If I may point out a silver lining–at least you had hardwoods. It could’ve been a lot worse.

So, to recap–thanks again for having us over. The donuts were delicious. Sorry about the poop.

Best,

–the Averills

 

Five Things That Aren’t Awesome About Parenthood

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Parenthood is magical, there’s no doubt about that. Sometimes, though, it’s more black magic than “kiss the frog” magic. Luckily, 87 percent of the time, being a dad is awesome. Here are a few things that inform that other 13 percent.

  1. Scraping poop out of big boy underwear…three times a day.
  2. The nasty looks that other parents at Mighty Might Gymnastics give you when your kid coughs on their kid. In my defense: I don’t care if my kid is patient zero with a wicked strain of chipmunk flu. We’re getting out of the house today!
  3. Fishing random objects out of the toilet with chopsticks. (Sidenote: chopsticks make excellent retrievers of floating cars, candy wrappers, credit cards…all the little things that end up in the toilet.)
  4. Suspecting your kid loves iPhone “Paint Sparkles” more than you.
  5. The constant fear that your two-year-old daughter is going to ask the waiter if he has a penis.

Nobody Touch My Poop

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One of the great mysteries of parenthood? Why toddlers who are potty training become overly possessive about their poop. Seriously. You’d think we were flushing their puppy down the toilet. We had a nice little screaming session this morning because our boy didn’t want his mom to take the poop out of his big boy underwear. And he definitely didn’t want her to flush it down the toilet. He melted into a naked mess on the bathroom floor and then came back several times to visit his poop in the toilet after he’d calmed down.

He’s not alone. I know other toddlers with the same sense of attachment. One dad tried to get to the bottom of the mystery by reasoning with his child, asking him a series of very logical questions. The result of the Socratic discussion was this: his boy likes the color brown.

Very logical.

I’m sure there is plenty of child development research that would tell me exactly why kids turn their poop into a friend. Maybe I’ll look them up later. In the meantime, I’m choosing to focus on the positive indicators of this new development. If nothing else, it shows my kid is loyal, even to feces. You gotta respect that. Never leave a man behind. Even if that man is poop.