Is That the Baby's Nose?!

Come on, admit it. When you saw your unborn child's sonogram picture did you think he/she looked a teensy bit funny? OK, maybe not at the first sonogram when you're just so thrilled to see an actual baby in there, but in the later pictures when the baby's really squished up? Our sonogram technician actually laughed out loud. She had a point, but still.

If Tori Spelling and I can cop to it, so can you. Read more about sonogram shallowness at TheBump.com:

A Poop Post, Featuring Tori Spelling

Warning: this post may contain content that some readers find objectionable. Namely, readers without children or those who are especially sensitive to descriptions of certain bodily functions. (Translation: this is a post about poop.)

Last week I read Tori Spelling’s memoir, Mommywood. A quick, fun read, my reaction was equal parts “Thank God I’m not famous and don’t have to deal with THAT” and “Wow, celebrities ARE just like the rest of us.” Case in point: they have to deal with their babies' poop.

Oh, Tori may take her tot to private swim lessons in salt-water swimming pools, but when the sh*t hits the swim diaper, she’s left holding the diaper bag. I laughed out loud at her description of how poop loses its “structural integrity” underwater, and how she debated whether to throw away a poopy towel and risk being seen as a wasteful, spoiled brat or whether to stuff the mess in her bag and bring it home.

In a related story, my parents were visiting last weekend and generously agreed to babysit -- and bathe –- the boys one night. All was well until the poop hit the tub. Miles screamed, my parents panicked, and the baby was oblivious. To capture the true horror of the experience, here’s an excerpt from a post I wrote when Miles was small, “Month 16: Tub Torpedo.” Add in another kid and it’s even worse.

“There’s no way around it: being a mom means dealing with gross stuff. I knew this going into it. And I’m not a gal who likes gross. From the moment I got pregnant I was bombarded with icky words like mucous and discharge and placenta. And the birth itself? Just yuck, people. Y-U-C-K.

And newborns, as everyone knows, do little more than pee and poop and spit up. Gross, but not that big a deal. Yet in spite of all my exposure to extreme grossness in the past year, I encountered a new level of nastiness the other night: the dreaded tub poop.

Now, I have been warned of this phenomenon by other moms. It’s even happened to C., who usually gives Miles his baths. I’m actually shocked that I’ve avoided it this long.

But no, that fateful evening, the baby stopped splashing, stood up, gave a telltale grunt and … the rest is just too gory to go into. But why stop now? You know what they say about, um, "stuff" hitting the fan? Well it’s worse when it hits the water. It immediately starts to dissolve and scatter in every direction. I swooped Miles out of that tub like I was rescuing him from the Titanic. Mayhem ensued. Gags were stifled. Powerful disinfectants were administered after the offending party was put to bed.

So now baths are back to being solely Dad’s domain. Isn’t it bad enough I went through childbirth? I can’t deal with this kind of carnage.”

I don’t want to spoil the book for you, but there’s another part where Tori describes scooping up a “dead leaf” floating near her toddler son in a hotel pool. Suffice it to say, mayhem ensued.

Underpants: The Final Frontier

Does anyone ever really get tired of potty-training posts? Well, too bad! First of all, how could I NOT write about something that’s consumed my life for the past 6.5 mos? And second of all, it provides a goldmine of humorous and horrific material. It would be a CRIME not to share that with all of you lucky people. ;)

So, anyway, remember when all this madness first started? And remember when I quit potty training? Obviously, that was not a permanent solution. So, reluctantly, I plunged back into it once my nerves and bathmats had recovered a bit. And wouldn’t you know it, Miles was almost 100% trained the week before I had the baby. Well, you can guess what happened then. Back to square one. Or maybe square two.

I can honestly tell you that this ordeal has been one of the few times in my 3 years of motherhood that I have felt like a complete and utter failure. We sailed through other potentially rocky transitions, like weaning from the breast, then the bottle, moving from bassinet to crib to big boy bed, and ditching the pacifier. How hard could it be? I thought. (Insert “har-de-har-har” here.)

Now I see that part of the problem is that I have an uncharacteristically high number of mom friends who successfully and painlessly potty trained their children -- boys, even -- at a young age. I refuse to look at the scientific data since it likely will only depress me further, but anecdotal evidence suggests that boys are ready somewhere around 2.5 years old, maybe closer to 3. But I know several parents whose boys were trained right around their second birthday. In most cases, the child himself initiated it.

I’d be tottering around on a walker if I’d waited for Miles to initiate potty training. This is confounding to me, since the kid absolutely INSISTS on doing everything from brushing his teeth to pushing his brother’s stroller by himself. But when it came to the bathroom, no interest.

“Just wait till he’s ready,” well-meaning moms told me. But readiness was another irritatingly vague and elusive concept. Does that mean when he starts showing interest in the toilet? Because he’s been interested in flushing things down it since he was 18 mos. old. Does ready mean when he’s uncomfortable wallowing in his own filth? Because that’s NEVER happened to this day.

Another part of the problem was finding my son’s motivation. (Doesn’t that sound like something you’d hear at acting school? “Find your motivation, Meryl!”) Praise, encouragement, clapping, even joyous singing and dancing didn’t have a lasting effect. (Tori Spelling and her potty dance be damned!) Neither did stickers, charts, candy, books, or toys.

We got more elaborate with our bribes -- but sadly, even the Lightning McQueen scooter didn’t do the trick. We resorted to threats (“We’re not going to the park EVER AGAIN until you go pee!”) and even peer pressure (“CHARLIE uses the potty. OLIVER wears big-boy underpants. Go ahead, show Miles your Cars underwear, sweetie.”) Miles could care less.

Besides being frustrating, potty training in our house became positively dangerous. My mother suffered a minor injury when she fell off the toilet as she was sitting there encouraging Miles to go on his little potty. This caused great hilarity in our family, as you can imagine. Then there was the time Miles was a little too enthusiastic in his approach, and he slipped and fell arm-first into the bowl. Thankfully, before he’d made a deposit. One time he leaned too far forward and narrowly missed chipping a tooth. They just don’t prepare you for this kind of stuff in the parenting books!

I know I’m jinxing myself by saying this, but Miles has made huge potty progress recently. He’s wearing underwear except for naps and nighttime. We’re even leaving the house without diapers. I know, call us crazy! He’s gone from having 4 accidents in one day to none some days.

What’s the secret? None that I can pinpoint, except maybe letting him run around bare-bummed. Less to mess with when he gets the urge, you know what I’m saying? I know we’re not out of the woods yet, but I am pleased to say that maybe my son will not go off to college in Pull-Ups. Fingers crossed.

PICK O’ THE WEEK: We have watched this DVD so many times it’s not even funny. But the “Dirty Diaper Blues” song sure is: Elmo's Potty Time

Reality TV for Moms

I hate to admit it, but reality TV has kind of grown on me. I guess this is not SO surprising, since I do prefer real life over fiction any day. What I hate are cringe-inducing shows featuring overly coiffed bimbos dripping mascara tears and professing their love for some dork they just met yesterday. So while you won’t catch me watching reality shows on dating or dancing or even dog-whispering, I AM intrigued by programs about pregnancy and parenthood. Yep, that’s my “escapist” indulgence after I put the tot to bed. Go figure.

Back in the day, I was a 90210 fan. (I still have the tacky twin-sized comforter to prove it. Thanks, Mom.) So perhaps it’s no big mystery why I like Tori Spelling’s reality show. What?! I think she’s funny. Don’t judge me. Like on last night’s episode, before her ob/gyn appointment –- she’s pregnant with her second baby, a girl –- she was talking about her irrational fears.

Tori: “Could the baby puncture one of my organs, causing me to bleed internally, therefore drowning her in my own blood?”

Dean (her husband): “Um … let’s ask Dr. J.”

Who among us hasn’t been there, peppering our husbands with all sorts of inane and improbable fears? I also like the show because their baby boy, Liam, is super cute. Once he was on the red carpet for the first time with his parents, being blasted by about 4 zillion flashbulbs and paparazzi and he’s all, “Yeah, baby!” mugging for the cameras and waving his hands around, rocking a tiny faux-hawk. Anyway, you should watch it.

Then there’s the new show, “The Baby Borrowers,” in which several teenage couples move in to their own houses and learn what it’s like to take care of a real baby. For several days, they have to care for an infant, then they move on to a toddler, teenager, and senior citizen. Pretty clever concept.

In the first episode, the teen girls had to put on a fake pregnant belly and take a class on childcare. This one girl totally flipped out because her boyfriend laughed when he saw her with the belly on. Girl, you are in for a serious shock if you think that’s the worst of it. She didn’t even have to strap on a fake pregnancy butt!! And it’s not like they induced morning sickness or gave her hemorrhoids, even. The belly’s a piece of cake, if you ask me.

My first thought when a bunch of parents showed up to hand off their (real) babies to these couples was, “What the hell kind of parent would willingly turn over their precious infant to a couple of underage complete strangers?!” One mom said she was a teenage mother herself and wanted to show teens how hard it is. OK, I guess that’s a good reason. Also, there were behind-the-scenes nannies in each house in case of emergency, and the parents could watch their babies on closed-circuit TV. But still. If you saw some of these couples... “Immature” would be a NICE way of putting it.

It was kind of funny to watch these kids struggling with feeding, diapering, and getting the babies to sleep, but mostly it just confirmed what us moms already know: taking care of a baby is DAMN HARD WORK. Of course, what the teens could never know is that when it’s your own, it’s different. It just is.

But could you imagine having cameras on you 24/7?? Then people would know that I let Miles eat food he’s dropped on the floor. And that C. lets him listen to explicit versions of rap songs. And that I often eat ice cream straight out of the container while I’m watching my shows. And who’d be crazy enough to reveal that stuff? ;)

WISH O’ THE WEEK: Happy 4th of July, everyone! Have fun even if you can’t stay up late enough to watch the fireworks and your kids are scared of them, anyway.