I Wanna Potty Like It's 2006

We started potty-training E over the Memorial Day long weekend. This is going to be a long and arduous process, fraught with many, many, many, many, many loads of laundry. This weekend alone, we ran over 13 loads of laundry (which included one t-shirt that Grandma brought back from China and promptly turned all of E's sheets into a mottled pink color).

We wanted to start the potty-training earlier, but my second pregnancy waylaid our plans. I wish we had had more fortitude at the time and just forged on when we had originally planned. At 18 months, we would have been potty-training a much less willful and stubborn creature.

The other challenge we are facing is that stand-alone potty seats are really too small for a 3 year-old, but a toilet ring on a regular toilet is still a bit intimidating. E looks either like a Lilliputian or Brobdignagian depending on which toilet he's on.

But he seems to be making some progress; today he only had accidents upon waking in the morning and after his nap. If anyone has any tips on how to get past the bed-wetting, let me know, thanks!

Shout Out To Working Families On Their Own

After a month without my nanny, and both sets of grandparents travelling at the same time, I've really developed an appreciation for all the parents who raise little ones on their own. No family, no hired help. Moms who hold down jobs while raising a child? SUPERMOMS. Single mothers? WONDER-WOMEN.

I don't know how I came out on the other side of holding down a full-time job, parenting, and being without my usual support network, having only this deepened respect and negligible psychological trauma to show for it. I bow down before all you mothers and fathers who do this day in and day out. I'm not worthy.

A Belated Happy Birthday, V!

I swore that I would not be one of those moms who lets child #2 get short-changed, but inevitably, it's hard to give undivided attention to the sweet low-maintenance baby when the high-strung three year-old is screaming his head off most of the time.

And so here I am, over a week after V's first birthday, finally acknowledging her big day. And V was as sweet and low maintenance as ever on her birthday. So low maintenance, in fact, that some people forgot she was even at her own party! That Grandma stole her away to a corner and monopolized her time had a little something to do with it, too.

A belated happy birthday to my wonderful daughter. Even though I may not get as much time with you, you have my whole heart.

Grandma's Hip

Do you remember when you used to diss your mom for not "getting" your music? My mom used to tell me to turn down my music and ask my why I would listen to all that noise. (Admittedly, my love for euro-pop confections like a-ha and Erasure wasn't all that cool to my peers, either.) I, in turn, questioned why my mom tortured me on the drive to school with her AM-Gold 70's nuggets like Air Supply and Leo Sayer.

So it came as a shock to me when I heard my mom's new cell phone ringtone today: Rihanna's "Please Don't Stop the Music". How could she be such a square when I was growing up and be so hip now? When I relayed this to my friends at a baby shower, half of them replied, "Who's Rihanna?" I see the square is on the other foot now.

It turns out that no longer being consumed with school functions and extra-curricular chauffeuring has allowed my mother the time to catch up on all her People magazines and learn to use her iPod, while my friends are all becoming pop culture misfits. I guess being a mom really does make you "lame".

I'm going to fight the dorkiness of being a mommy to the end. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go get me some Applebottom jeans and them boots with the fur....

OMG, I think that last line officially makes me a dork.