Just when I thought my potty training days were over, my best friend's children came to stay at my house. Overnight. Without their parents in attendance.
I was so excited to have a toddler in the house again (somebody remind me I said this when I take them to the pool later today). I climbed up on my husband's car, which was no small feat since he just waxed it, and retrieved our old training potty from the garage shelf. It's one of the few pieces of toddler paraphernalia we saved. You'd be amazed how much time you save on roadtrip when you take that puppy along in the minivan. “Mawm I gotta go!” every thirty minutes no longer causes migraines.
Anyhow, back to the nonmoving minipotty port. I hosed out the Little Tykes receptacle, dried it to a high shine and brought inside. I lovingly placed in on the kitchen counter and said to my husband, “Look!” For some reason his face did not light with the same glee as mine.
In my mind a slide show of the three hundred pictures we took of our then toddler children on said potty was clicking away. Scott's mind saw the potty and conjured up visions of the Microsoft money page that reflected the annual diaper budget converted to the annual orthodontia budget which will eventually convert to the annual tuition budget. No, he was not smiling.
No matter, Tyler, my resident Toddler, would be excited that Aunt Karen had her very own mini potty for him to use. Never mind the fact that his mother warned me they were in the midst of a power struggle in the formerly successful potty training process. The boy was at Major General Rinehart's house now. Things would be different for me. After all, this was the same child whose mother swore he never stopped talking to her but played quietly for hours on end at my house.
“Tyler, come with me!” I held the potty in front of me much like the priest holds the book of gospel readings for all to respect and anticipate, as we paraded back to my kids' bathroom. “How's this Tyler? Do you want the potty in here?”
Tyler seemed skeptical. He gave me the three-year-old version of the You-Are-Wasting-My-Time-Lady Look but wasn't quite ready to be outright disobedient.
“I don't like this bathroom.” “You don't? Well OK, let's go see Aunt Karen's bathroom!” The Potty Parade proceeded down the hall, through my bedroom and into my bathroom. I placed the potty, with a great flourish, in front of the tub. “I present to thee, Prince Tyler, thy potty.” “I like this bathroom, Aunt Karen.” Bingo! “OK Ty Ty, let's go potty before dinner,” I said as I pulled down his training pants and plopped him on the little blue commode.
“I don't want to go.”
“Sure you do.”
“No, I don't wanna go.”
“Come on Tyler, you're a big boy. Go pee pee in the potty.”
“I can't.”
“Yes you can.”
“I can't.”
“Does daddy go pee pee in the potty?”
“No.”
“Yes he does. Go pee pee.”
“I can't.”
“Tyler, you need to aim that thing down, not up.”
“Huh?”
I pointed to the object of his manhandling, “You need to aim down into the bowl, not up, or you'll pee in your face. You don't want to pee in your face, do you?”
“Um, no.” He aimed down. Whew! We were making progre… “Aunt Karen I can't go. My dad flies an airplane. I want a drink of water. Why does the ceiling do that? My mom has that. I'm hungry. Why is this your bathroom? What's that?”
The boy won. He was going to babble away the night and burst a bladder before he'd give me the satisfaction of putting something in that pot. Besides, I could smell the chicken pot pies on the verge of burning from here. It was time to pack away my Superaunt pride and admit defeat.
Enroute to the kitchen I heard a flush and then the sound of hand washing from behind the hall bathroom door. Out came my teenage son. At least I did something right back in my children's toddler days. Again the slide show of my kids in their potty training days came to light: Little tow-headed two-year-olds holding Golden Books strategically on their laps; the time my daughter covered herself from head to toe in Desitin in prepotty preparation; sitting for hours until they fell asleep with bowl marks on their bums; quietly slipping under the restaurant table to go poop; peeing through the wrought iron railing of the front porch as passing cars slowed to take pictures…Hmmm.
I'll let his mother deal with it.
Karen Rinehart is a magazine humor columnist, public speaker and the creator of The Bus Stop Mommies, a newspaper. She is also author of Invisible Underwear, Bus Stop Mommies and Other Things True To Life. You can read more of her work at karenrinehart.net. Karen lives in Concord, North Carolina with her two kids, one husband and goofball dog, where they attend St. James Catholic Church. (Well, they leave the dog at home.) She enjoys hearing from readers across the States and as far away as Australia, Japan and England.
