Get on the Pot!! A Tale of Perseverance and Poop

The top of the refrigerator is where all the good stuff is. Ceramic pots holding keys that don't open anything. Bills that never go away. Important tax information that we pray doesn't slide off the back. Occasionally, a seasonal elf.

And potty bribes. Always display the potty bribe on top of the refrigerator, for all (kids) to see.

Earlier in the year, our world was jolted when we learned our oldest child had scoliosis, until we then learned she'd handle it way better than we would. Then a different situation involving a kid's backside took over and threatened to divide our house.

After boldly foolishly predicting (jinxing) in August I had exactly 13 diapers left to change in my lifetime, it soon became evident that those of you betting the "over" could redeem your winning, poop-stained tickets at a changing table nearest you. Somebody refused to cooperate, even though our diaper budget had officially run out after 7 consecutive years and more money than we spent on cars.

We tried to sweeten the pot for our 2-year-old to sit on the pot by buying a couple of $6 trucks and setting them--guess where-- on top of the refrigerator. Turns out we could have placed the trucks in the attic, the other dead-end destination for overly curious children, back behind the Apple IIe monitors, bowling balls, and broken humidifiers and dehumidifiers. The little guy had less interest in toy trucks than in sitting in a pile of his own mess. Sounds reasonable, amiright, 2-year-olds?

Kids present challenges at all ages. But there are few more painful times than when you're expected to predict exactly when a toddler in underpants is about to crap himself. More painful than watching them try to butter, add syrup to, and slice a waffle. More painful than when other people's kids introduce yours to pop music.

The scene of many crimes lately.

The kid doesn't know when it's time to go. You used to know. He'd grab hold of the biggest piece of furniture in the house, cross his eyes, and turn his face a magenta you haven't seen since the 64 crayons. Now, he disappears into your shoe closet and as you notice he's is missing, you have to fetch a mask and a shovel and hurry to save your favorite slippers.

"I have to POOP!" he beams. Your closet smells like chemical warfare.

One particularly bad evening saw us unwittingly involved in a game of hide and seek with a cold-blooded menace. As my wife innocently called out, "Where arrrrre you?" he answered back in a sing-songy voice, "behind the couuuuuuch!"

"What are you dooooooing?"

"Poooping my paaaaaants!"

And we both scrambled to our feet, pre-empted the game, moved the couch, located the perpetrator and frowned as he smiled, another lost opportunity to get the kid on the pot.

Our life had turned into the first 20 minutes of a kidnapping movie, except our kid was the bad guy instead of the victim. And instead of refusing to bargain with the bad guy, we offered him anything he wanted. Toy trucks? Yours. Mickey Mouse pancakes every night for two weeks? Fire up the that god-awful Griddle. And instead of slamming the phone down and/or hanging up and laughing maniacally, he'd stay on his Fisher Price and pretend to talk to Grandma, then throw it down the stairs and laugh maniacally.

Our wits usually have no end, but they were appearing in plain view as we almost went Tony Hayward on each other. We got out the potty chart in an attempt to get our lives back. Nothing worked.

One day it clicked. Just as a routine visit to the dentist miraculously coaxed our co-sleeping 4-year-old into his own bed, a routine trip to the barber shop convinced our 2-year-old to stop soiling himself. As he was waiting his turn to sit in the chair, once again our star decided he had to go to the bathroom, except he never told anyone of his intentions, and so...

"Well, you can't get your hair cut with poopy pants," his rankled mother told him as she carried the boy, quite literally kicking and undoubtedly screaming, out of the barber shop, his hair still shaggy and unruly.

Trucks be damned. Pancakes be damned. All the kid wanted was a haircut, and when he didn't get one because of a bad set of underpants, he realized he needed to change course, soon, before his bangs covered his eyes.

So he went home and immediately sat on the toilet. But this is a tale of perseverance; the happy ending does not come quickly. He had just done the deed a few minutes earlier, so he sat and sat and pushed and crossed his eyes and turned that eggplant/deviled egg/magenta we were used to, and...nothing.

Bummer.

But the precedent had been set. The potty chart was out, and after filling up his chart with 10 stickers roughly 10 days later, he had his trucks from the top of the fridge and clean underwear on his bottom. And we had our lives back.

To be sure, sometimes it's still a struggle...when he announces he has to poop, he's moved up the deadline from 5 seconds too late to 5 seconds early. So there's no "hold on, buddy...right after I send out this email/I finish this page/this play/etc." "I need to poop" means "I need to poop. Now." And there have been accidents, but mostly when he's been "helping" with the dishes and forgets what he's doing.

So the top of the fridge is back to old mail and wallets. For us it's on to a new phase of frivolous spending...tell us, oh parents whose kids are out of diapers, what will we spend our money on next?

What Did I Miss? November 6

Another day when my kids hit the sack before I get home...sigh...this is what happened...

We finally brought out the armada in the war against pooping our pants. Tired of listening to how continent our youngest can be within the walls of Day Care only to have him come home and slide away and hide under the kitchen table to load up, we bribed him with offered him a fleet of toy trucks. (Retail Price: $5.88)

The toys that will keep our house from smelling like poop. Pictured at bottom: A two-year-old pic of the Easter Bunny.

He declined for six weeks, opting instead to suddenly disappear and quietly soil himself instead of going through the rigors of pooping on the toilet. We suspected something was amiss when he started disappearing. He never disappears, he's always in our faces, making himself available at all times and leaving a trail of toys in his wake, which we find in the middle of the night with our feet.

Tonight he found the trucks and decided he wanted to play with them. This, shortly after once again smudging up the face of Jake from Jake and the Neverland Pirates.

"Ohhhhhh, no," my wife said she said, before explaining that he can't have the trucks until he poops on the potty at home ten times in a row. He seemed so agreeable to the deal that he immediately went to the can and tried to poop all ten times right then and there...nearly giving himself a childhood hernia, if there is such a thing? Or bursting a blood vessel in his anus. We'll see if the enthusiasm continues or wanes, but if trucks are on the line, then these days might be over (I hope you took the over.)

For Christmas and then his birthday last year, we got the middle one the complete set of mini-NFL football helmets. (OK, maybe they were for me, too.) Every week, we organize them in order of the week's NFL matchups, and each week, when I ask for the Seahawks, Texans, Bears, Falcons, Jaguars, Panthers, Ravens, or even Buccaneers helmets, he always hands me the Broncos, and I have to say a variation of "That's not a bird, that's a HORSE."

So now he has become obsessed with death, which always unsettles me when he speaks so frankly about it. Tonight he asked what people are like when they're dead. When my wife responded that they don't do anything, he insisted that Dad (who apparently will go first) will still eat with us, go to work, and, most importantly, move the football helmets. Somebody PLEASE move the football helmets for him when I'm gone.

Scholarship Money is Available

We will, from time to time, place items on top of the refrigerator and use them as rewards or incentives for good behavior. Of course, as the kids get older, they have to do something more than just not act like jackasses. They actually have to do something, like make a significant contribution to the cleanliness of the house or save their little brother from drowning on one of those magic wands with the mysterious liquid/glitter combination. There has been a box of unearned Legos up there for over a week now, which certainly disappoints my wife and me.

Today I am upping the ante. While I won't divulge the final figures, I will offer to pay a "handsome amount" toward my daughter's college education on one primary condition. (Sources with knowledge of the situation estimate the amount to be in the $500,000 - $750,000 range, or roughly one semester of 2025 tuition at a state school, according to projections.) To qualify, my daughter does not have to clean the gutters, cut the grass, be left-handed, do well in school, participate in a bunch of extra-curricular activities, or kiss the butts of her trigonometry teachers for recommendations.

She simply has to stop talking like a baby.

That's right, I'll contribute upwards of $750,000 to my 6-year-old daughter's college fund, if she'll JUST STOP talking like a baby.

(Understand that our girl has just recently started talking like a baby every so often just to be cute. We as parents, and especially my wife as a kindergarten teacher, realize that kids develop speech patterns at vastly different rates. We're obviously not frustrated at the speech itself, just the attempt at attention. The only impediment here is her understanding that she's not as cute as she thinks she is.)

Of course, there is some fine print. She must not talk like a baby continuously from now until the day she is accepted to an accredited university, if she chooses to go to college. If she decides not to enroll in a university or trade school, I'll still pay her. Whatever. I'll start the clock and prorate $750,000 over each second between now and 2025. Every time she uses a word from the below list of forbidden baby words, the clock "resets" and the maximum amount she can collect diminishes.

This includes when she speaks to her baby brother. He's nearly 18 months old now, so we can stop treating him like the helpless blob in a baby carriage that he might have been last summer. Besides, when he's busy choking himself with a slinky, the phrase, "Did that widdle swinky-dinky get cot awound youw necky-wecky?" doesn't seem to lend appropriate gravity to the situation.

Herewith are words that she is forbidden to use in order to earn the $750,000. In typical job responsibilities fashion, the list includes but is not limited to:

Awwowed, bwoke, bwoken, cwimb, Dewaware, famiwy, ice queem, pissgetti, pway, pwease, pwobbwy, queen (acceptable in terms of a king's wife but not in the absence of dirt), sweep (i.e. sleep) swide, wast, way (as in way down to sweep), weawwy, weg, wittle, wight, wike, wowwipop, wunning, (and all forms of the verb "wun") wuv, yewwow.

In addition, we must have absolutely no more conversations like this recent one - decisions of the judges will be final:

Me (concerned, to my wife): He seemed to be running a little temperature.
Daughter: He ran a temper? Whaaaat? You said he ran a tem...
Me: Temperature.
Daughter: What's a temper chore?
Me: Tem-per-a-ture
Daughter (mocking): Tem-per-a-chore?
Me: WILL YOU PRESENTLY STOP THIS INSANITY!!

Also, on a related note, it is written into the contract that if she ever attempts to amuse or entertain anyone, including friends, relatives, or business associates with an impersonation of Baby Bear from Sesame Street, Dad has the right to void the contract immediately, without warning and without refund.

The fourth and final condition is that no backtalk is allowed. Assuming at some point she decides to forego the baby talk and the reminding me at every instance when I call her by her brother's name, the backtalk line in the deal virtually assures me a minimal payout, since teens just can't keep their mouths shut. As dads who have come before me might have said, "You gotta get the backtalk clause in there. It's your golden parachute."

So no backtalk awwowed (ah, now she has me doing it) from now until college; like that will happen. I think my $750,000 is safe, at least until we need to start pricing minivans again.

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