i make a lot of cracks about the boys i live with being foul little creatures (my 2-1/2 year old has already figured out how to swallow air and burp on command, and that if he needs to fart while in the bath, it’s a hell of a lot louder, and thus funnier, if he sits down real quick so it bubbles up through the bathwater.) but i discovered last week during a drive-by playdate that little girls – or at least, the awesome ones – are about the same in nearly every detail, save the anatomical ones.
PewPewPew stopped by, and for the first time he had his little sister, LivinLarge, in tow. she seems to be one of a new class of little girls that didn’t exist when i was a kid. in my day, you were either a girly girl (and thus a boring pain in the ass, as far as i was concerned) or a tomboy. today, there is a deceptive class that dresses girly, but plays with cool stuff – possibly in addition to things on the barbie/toy kitchen/fake makeup axis, or possibly instead of them. LivinLarge is preschool-aged, and i think is now allowed to roam the neighborhood freely with her big brother because she is newly potty-trained.
“potty-trained” is a term that is very much subject to interpretation. it’s more of a gradient than an either-or thing. there are plenty of parents who swear up and down that their two-year-old (or 18 month old… or 9 month old, even) is “potty-trained” because every brownie gets baked in the potty, not in diapers. as far as i’m concerned, a kid isn’t potty trained until he can detect a rod knocking, take his own ass to the potty, get his own pants down and his exit hatch over the target area before the payload is released, make at least a token attempt at using toilet paper, and then get his pants back up. even then, though, it’s still a couple of months (or years) before they really flesh out the process with things like handwashing and flushing. yeah, there are some 18-month olds who are genuinely potty-trained by my criteria, but it’ll still be a year or three before you can really just let them do their thing without ever providing any support services like night-time diapers and butt-wipings. so potty-training is mostly in the eye of the beholder, but i will go ahead and say one thing with utter confidence: if you’re holding your 6-month-old’s ass over a potty every 20 minutes, and let the laws of statistics do their thing, yes, 99.9% of loaves will get pinched over the potty, but that is NOT potty trained. also? mommy needs a fucking hobby so she develops some perspective about the difference between good and bad uses of those 4 or so hours of her day.
we’ll get back to that in a moment. anyway, LL informed me that she needed to go potty. sort of.
LL: hi!
me: hi!
LL: hi!
me: hello again!
LL: hi!
(at this point, i finally realized that she was probably following me around the kitchen and repeatedly greeting me because she needs something more than a return greeting.)
me: do you need something?
LL: no. do you have a potty like i do?
me: well, i don’t know if it’s like yours, but i have a potty!
LL: you do?
me: yep!
LL: who told you that?
me: you know, i don’t remember. do you need to go potty?
LL: no. yes.
so i showed her to the potty, and after observing her scoot the stool over to the toilet, step up, and start yanking her skirt out of the way with total confidence, i walked away to give her some privacy, secure in the knowledge that, though little boys may be retarded monkeys when it comes to potty habits, little girls are much more fastidious and competent. she proceeded to completely disabuse me of this notion. she left the door open, didn’t flush, didn’t wash her hands, left no evidence of doing anything with toilet paper, had her underwear twisted a good 90 degrees around from where it ideally should have been, and managed to pee on the seat, the floor, and the wall. in fact, there was no indication that much of anything made it into the actual bowl. “i’m done!” she declared, throwing her arms up in triumph. cutest. thing. ever. then she went back to shooting nerf darts at the other kids.
anyway, like i said. potty-training. it’s definitely in the eye of the beholder… and LivinLarge was pretty much yelling “BEHOLD! i am potty-trained, and i am AWESOME!”
and let me reiterate: Elimination Communication, i have seen you in action, and i mock you openly. no, really. if you think i was kidding about the 4 hours a day with the six month old held over a poop-catcher, click that link.
