Warning: The following blog post is intended for immature audiences only. Reader discretion is advised.
You think, once you've got them out of diapers 24 hours a day, going to the bathroom by themselves, and taking care of it all on their own at 2 AM, that the potty training is all done. But it isn't. I had no idea that there were so many levels to this thing. I'm not talking about Penelope - we're not quite to that point with her yet. In fact, I still harbor the illusion that with her, that's all there is to it. No.. right now, I am talking about the boy.
First, it's the pants thing. Ben and I spent a lot of quality father-son time in public restrooms over the past week or so - restaurants, airports, various stores, a theme park - wherever we happened to be when he needed to empty his bladder.
Here's how it goes: we walk into the bathroom, Ben heads over to a urinal, he drops his pants and underwear all the way down to his ankles, and then he does his business. At the ripe old age of 5 going on 6, it obviously isn't a big deal that his butt cheeks are out there flapping in the wind. It even prompts a chuckle sometimes if there happens to be a line. But at some point, perhaps when he's taller than the urinal, it will no longer be cute. So - this is kind of an open question to other parents of boys (or maybe even just a question for other guys out there) - when do they (we) stop doing that? I can't remember doing it, though I am sure I must have. I've told him a few times that he doesn't need to drop 'em all the way to the floor, but he doesn't seem to care. Do I just have to wait for some modesty to kick in (right now, he has zero)? Or do I need to stage an intervention?
Secondly, well... he misses. Often. This, I have actually talked with other parents about, and it's a pretty common issue for little boys (one said "My kid is ten and he still can't aim to save his life.") Judging from the condition of the public and semi-public men's rooms out there, I'd say that a lot of grown-up boys need some more target practice as well. Not to say I haven't been guilty as well - I seem to vaguely recall some kind of floating target system in one of the bathrooms from my childhood. Apparently though, with Ben it is not an aiming problem. At least not according to him. He explained it all to me during our trip to the grandparents' house last week.
I was already in the bathroom, helping Penelope reach the faucet to wash her hands. Ben comes rushing in with an emergency situation and drops his pants to the floor (remember, zero modesty). So, he's over there peeing, and I hear the noise change from "hitting water" to "definitely not hitting water". I am thinking oh no.. he's peeing on the floor, and I look over. But he isn't - he's still hitting the inside of the bowl, if just barely. I say to him, "Ben, be careful. Make sure you don't pee outside the toilet."
As I finish my sentence, he finishes too. Still standing there half naked, he decides to tell me how it is. "Dad, It's ok, I didn't. There's only three times when that happens."
He holds up a finger, "One. Fast peeing. That's what I just did, but it all went into the toilet, so its ok."
He puts up a second finger, "Two. Double-peeing. That's when some goes like this, and some goes like that." He demonstrates this second option by pointing in two different directions with his other hand.
Then he holds up a third finger, "Three. Wobbly penis. Which is what happens when I let go." This too, he demonstrates by doing a couple iterations of a Chubby Checker dance move.
As he was pulling his pants back up, I told him with the straightest face I could muster at the time that we can keep the third one from being an issue by not letting go, and we'd work on the other two. He has obviously been giving it some thought. A couple days later he came out of the bathroom, and without any introduction to the subject he said to me, "Dad, there's a fourth one. Triple peeing."
No comments:
Post a Comment