Tag: motherhood

Potty Training 101 – aka: reality is crap

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It’s been about 2 weeks since we entered into the serious phase of Potty Training our 2/5 yr old.  Let me just say, I taught preschool/toddlers for 5 years.  Somehow I missed out on the full-on potty training involvement though.  Just like everything else with parenthood, it’s never the same until YOU are the parent and YOUR kid is the one who’s wet undies you are obsessed over keeping dry.

We’ve known the potty training phase was on the horizon for a while.  But with the little bit of knowledge I do have on the subject, I knew we were NOT going to rush it.  Boys are notorious for being hard to train.  Like their older counter-parts, little boys seem to have some control issues with regards to the potty…if my hubby’s 20 min poop sessions are any example.

Now that J is getting closer to the big 3, school suggested that we push a little harder so that he could move into the big kid room.  (BTW – suddenly realizing your LO is getting older NEVER gets easier.  I will be crying every year or more for the next eternity).  We already had the little potty set up in the bathroom.  He’d managed to use it a few times randomly since we got it.  One time about a week after we bought the potty, J pooped in it all on his own! Hooray! Except that I was in the shower at the time.  Lovely to jump out of the shower with your hair still soapy so that you can wipe a tiny ass before poop ends up all over the bathroom.

Now that we’re a couple weeks into the “serious” training, J has pretty much got it.  And my pretty much, I mean that he gets it when he wants to.  He held it for almost 4 hours when we went to the zoo the other day (phew) but then peed 2 times in an hour this morning within 5 feet of the potty.  Yay parenthood.  Guess we aren’t done with wet pants and laundry every other day yet!  Not that I had any misgivings about potty training.  I expected there to be an ebb and flow.  But at some point I’m going to get really tired of pee on my…well everything. On another note, we totally should have gotten furniture covers when we started this journey.  Turns out J’s favorite place to pee his undies is while sitting in Daddy’s favorite chair. LOL.

Really though, he’s doing so great.  Such a smart little boy with such a strong spirit.  He’ll get it 100% soon enough.  For now, we’ll deal with the accidents and slight pee smell in our house, and love him all the same.

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You’re not alone, Mama

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Being a Mom is one of the biggest blessings in life.  There are very few things that are as rewarding, exciting, exhausting, wouldn’t-trade-it-for-the-world, as being Mama.  But speaking of exhausting…some days you wish you could just leave those kiddos for a few days and get back to being JUST YOU.  You are not alone in this, Mama.  We all go through these moments…or days, or weeks, or even months.  Being a Mama is hard work.  Sometimes more challenging than you ever could have imagined.  Often leaving you stressed, sleep deprived, over-worked, sometimes being Mama isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Not ALL THE TIME.  And do you know what?!  Sometimes YOU need a BREAK!  And that is OK!

Mama’s are allowed to have a selfish moment, too.  We give and give all that we have 99% of the time to fussy babies, cranky toddlers, frustrating teens…and even though we wouldn’t trade them for the world…sometimes we would prefer a little “me time” over “mama, mama, mama time”.

The hardest part though, is that Mama’s think they should be able to do it all, everything, 100% of the time.  We think we should be able to be the rock, the meal-provider, the boo-boo kisser, the story book reader, the play mate, the rock to sleeper, the dishes doer, the laundry folder, the dog walker, the bed maker, the bathroom cleaner….but most of the time we set those ridiculous expectations for ourselves.  We hold ourselves to a much higher standard than we probably should.

So, it is OK if once in a while we lose our shit.  We hold it together 99% of the time, so don’t be surprised when that 1% it gets to be too much and we need a little break from it all.  A little time to glue ourselves back together with shopping and dinner as our adhesive of choice.  Your family will survive without you for a day.

Be good to yourselves, Mama’s…you deserve the best too!