Her Potty Chair and My Potty Mouth




I don’t know how to start this. I guess it is mostly about my mom-pride. We all have it for something. Some of us have it for enduring childbirth without drugs, some of us for breastfeeding exclusively for an entire year, and some of us for going through all of our pregnancies without welcoming a single stretch mark. I fall in none of the above pride-categories as I took ALL. THE. DRUGS. during labor and then instead of spitting them out my vagina like you’re supposed to I ended up having three c-sections. My third child literally NEVER breastfed...not even in the hospital...not even to get the “liquid gold” stuff that comes out before the milk. Nope. None of it. It’s probably why she has to wear glasses now. And as far as stretch marks go...let’s just say you could play a rousing game of tic-tac-toe on my belly. The horizontal lines are from the c-sections and the vertical ones are the stretch marks. But don’t pick the middle square in that game because that would be my belly button and God knows where that leads anymore. It’s like the Chunnel.

Anyway, I don’t have pride about any of those things. My mom-pride is all wrapped up in the fact that I potty-train my kids BEFORE they are 2 ½. That’s right. That’s what my medal will be for. Well, until this last kid. She’s proving to be more difficult than her sisters. And by difficult I mean she’s refusing. And I can handle a kid saying, “no.” It’s not my first temper tantrum. But this has turned out to be the most awful parenting experience in the decade I have been a mother. A month ago I put her on the potty just for shits and giggles. I got neither. So this week Joe and I took a page from Becca the Bachelorette and decided to “do the damn thing.”

I don’t know who has cried more. She turns 2 ½ on the 27th of this month and I feel like I’m rapidly seeing my first place medal getting further out of reach. The other kids took 3 days. So starting on July 4 we should have been done by now. Instead, I’m pretty sure she’s given herself a UTI from holding it so much and I’ve drunk a box of wine. Per day. This is a greater upset than Brazil’s loss in the World Cup. It’s like Michael Phelps forgot how to swim. Or like Milli Vanilli forgot how to sing. Maybe I just won’t get my mom medal from potty-training. I don’t know how else to win the prize. Can I start breastfeeding NOW? I mean, after the wine has metabolized…?

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