7/27/09 - Warning . . . the following blog post contains mostly potty talk.

Did I mention we'd started potty-training Jonah? It seems like I'd written just a little something about that . . . I think I might have blocked most of the process from my memory. The thing is? He almost seems to be getting the hang of it now!

Although . . . every time I take him to the bathroom I am required to call the pee by a different name. If I say potty, he says No, it's pee. If I say pee, he says No, it's pee pee. Never in my life have I uttered the words pee pee; even writing it seems to violate something deep inside me, and I don't intend to start now. Except that I do. I mean let's be honest, I'll say whatever he wants me to if he'll just do it.

So tonight he ran into the room yelling, My potty has to go pee pee! I jumped up too and ran him to the toilet where he did not want to stand on the stool and he did not want me to lift him up because he wanted to do it all by himself. It's only a problem because the toilet is somewhat high. And Jonah is somewhat short, still. Do you see where this is going? Don't worry, though, because as stubborn and fierce as Jonah is, he's also a smart little guy. So he stood on his very tip-tippy toes and sort of . . . propped . . .himself onto the edge of the toilet. Note to self . . . clean toilet better from now on. Because it has either 1) had little boy testicles propped all around the rim, or 2) the little boy testicles propped on the rim will end up in somebody else's pee. My stomach churns and I vow never again to let Jonah use a public bathroom.

Our house is full of do-it-yourselfers these days, it seems. Joshua took his very own shower tonight, and even washed his own hair. I watched his tiny yet big lanky body under the water, noted the fading tatoos on arm and belly, his eyes shut while the water poured over his face, and I was so fantastically proud of him. It did not occur to me even once to be nostalgic for his fleeting childhood. Which is so unlike me. I hope that I will not know that the last bath I ever give Joshua is the last one. It shouldn't be something that is so final, so permanently cancelled. I'd like to be sitting around one day watching the boys play in the sandbox and have it suddenly occur to me that, hmm, I don't remember the last time I gave Joshua a bath. And then I can have my melancholy moment, perhaps. Or perhaps not, because as I send him off to the shower I will be rejoicing in the freedom that comes only when your child can bathe himself.

I am talking about the baths . . . and secretly, I realize that I'm also talking about how it was with nursing the boys. Had I written anything about Jonah being done nursing? Egad, you gasp? Well I should hope so, you exclaim? I'm not here to make excuses; I nursed the boys until we were both ready to be done, both times. And both times they were a little over two years. I never shed tears thinking, This will be the last time he ever nurses . . . I never had to deal with the painful engorgement and the to-pump-or-not-to-pump dilemna. I found a full box of nursing pads this evening when I was cleaning out the nightstand drawer and I'll admit that I did sigh wistfully. I'm entitled, no? I will never use another nursing pad, never cradle another nursing infant. I will never take another hot shower in hopes of warding off an onslaught of mastitis, and when I hear a baby cry from another aisle in the store I will never have to panic and wonder if I'd remembered those pads that day. That was a different time . . . a wonderful time . . . and now we've moved on to different things.

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Carbon Copy

It's been so long since I blogged, I'm almost afraid I've forgotten how. I get so caught up in the everyday tasks of life that I forget how much I need to remember.

Jonah is a walking talking social butterfly of a boy who is so fierce it makes me want to scream and hug him at the same time. We'd thought vaguely about potty training him . . . I'd like to get it done before school starts again. When I walked in to his room the smell of poop hit me in the face and before I said a word he told me, "I don't need a diaper change!" Oh my little guilty and stubborn child! I reminded him that his bottom would get burned if he didn't get a diaper change soon, to which he replied, "I want to sit in the poop. I want my bottom to get burned." What do you say? What do I say when he tells me that he's not a big boy, Joshua is the big boy. Jonah is a baby. When he really is still my baby? Only babies don't wear underwear, only big boys wear underwear. I tried that, it didn't work.

Joshua seems to be . . . well, status quo might be the right word for it. I know that he's growing since his clothes fit differently and he takes up the whole bathtub now, but his classmates and friends are all so much bigger than he is that I wonder why he hasn't grown in the last few years. When the other kids are running outside and playing tag, or climbing onto the top of the fort, why is Joshua alone in the living room reading a book? Why can't he be more like . . . well, more like me? I want so badly for him to fit in, to be the cool kid, to have the answers when the teacher asks . . . and I can't do any of it for him. And I can't stand around and coach him as to what to say or do, because it's something he has to figure it out on his own. I just never imagined that he'd come up with different answers than me. I never imagined that he'd end up being his very own little person. So I hug him tightly and whisper in his ear how wonderful and how special he is. He seems to already know this, which is good.

I've enrolled Joshua in swimming lessons this summer. It's his first summer for them . . . he'll be five. What kind of swim coach am I that my son is almost 5 years old and can't swim, right? I'm hoping for him to not be scared, to not cry, and to be the best and bravest in the class. At the same time, I don't want to set him up for failure and make my expectations so high he'll never reach them. Will my desires show? My frustrations? I hope not . . . I'm working on it. Letting him be himself and not my carbon copy.

Jonah might well be my carbon copy in some ways. I'm coming to realize that it's not all it's cracked up to be, since he's so fiercly independent and stubborn. I'm reluctantly admitting that he gets it from me. If I open his cheese stick, he has to put it back and pretend to do it himself. If I lift him out of the car he has to climb back in just to get out on his own. If Tim buckles his carseat but he wanted mama to do it . . . watch out world. If the birds fly too close to the backyard he runs out yelling his reprimands. And then after all of it he turns his chubby cheeks toward me, looks into my eyes and wraps his arms around my neck and it's all worth it. Every impossible minute.

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It's time for the boys to go to bed, and we go through our nightly ritual . . . we read, we pray, we sing. They get into pajamas - Joshua all by himself, and Jonah by the sheer force of my will, as I wrangle his leg into the first hole. His other leg gets stuck halfway through and we're falling over because he can't stop laughing and fighting and laughing about the pajamas, and I'm laughing too, but realizing that I am so done with the nightly pajama wrestle.

And then they're both in bed with the lights turned out, Joshua lying obediently and silently on the top bunk, waiting for sleep. But Jonah just can't let go. He has such a hard time staying in bed, going to sleep. So I kneel beside him and he reaches his little hand out and grasps my neck. Mama here, he whispers, and I confirm Yes baby, mama is here. His breath is warm and thick, and he whispers again, Shhhh, sleep. His little hand softly caresses my cheek, and I want to stay there all night. To curl up with him under his quilt and nestle my face into his soft damp hair that still smells like shampoo and evening air.

I think about Joshua up there on the top bunk, all alone. I want to grab him from his solitude and take both him and Jonah into one bed where we would lie with our legs tangled together, with warm kid breath on my neck and arms thrown across me, and sleep there forever. And I think, this is life.

Except then reality knocks softly on the door and reminds me how much I hate it when their too-sharp toenails gouge my calves, and how I would actually lay there not being able to move, yet wishing that I could just move one inch to one side or the other. Reality bangs on the door and I'm trapped in a web of arms and legs and hot sticky breath and please can I just have a breath of fresh air? Reality kicks the door in as I realize the urgency with which I now have to go to the bathroom, yet if I move my little toe then both boys will be awake for an hour.

So I whisper in Jonah's ear Night, night, baby. Mama loves you. And I retreat to the stillness of the house where I plop contentedly onto the couch with a bowl of artichoke hearts to watch Ugly Betty. I think, this is life.