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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