Potty of Gold

This past holiday weekend, I decided that Kensie and I were gonna hunker down and get this potty-training thing licked. I had an extra day off of work, and as advanced as she seems in so many other areas of her preschooler-dom, I was sure three days was plenty of time for Kensie to be up and running (or, should I say, down and peeing). Who needs outdoor barbecues with friends and football or fabulous days frolicking at the beach when you’ve got a naked toddler running through the house with a potty full of urine shouting, “Mommy, I tinkled! MOMMY, LOOK AT MY TINKLE!”

Kensie had shown interest in potty-training last December when visiting my brother’s family in Denver (my niece enjoyed showing K her “old” potty and how she now used the “big” potty as a grown-up three-year-old). So about six months or so ago, when the interest resurfaced, I bought two potties—one for upstairs, and one for downstairs (secretly thinking my kid was a genius not yet being two and already wanting to use the big-girl potty). And for the past three or four months, K’s been using them when it’s convenient and fun for her. When I introduced pull-ups a couple of months ago in preparation for potty training, she was at first excited but soon enough just treated them as diapers with a little bit of pink splashed on them for good measure. Pull-ups proved no help in our house.

So this past Friday, I prepared myself for a tough weekend of gentle coaxing, massive amounts of juice and popsicles, puddles of pee on the carpet and hardwoods, frustration, excitement, and finally, the brass ring—my sweet girl wearing cute little panties, running to the potty at her convenience, and, most importantly, NO MORE DIAPERS! All the money I would be saving; all the guilt about contributing to the degradation of our environment of which I would be letting go. Diaper rashes, poopy bottoms, dried-out wipes all over the house, saggy britches—all GONE! It sure sounded great at the time.

Friday evening went well enough. We hadn’t gotten the big-girl panties yet (the trip to Target was planned for early Saturday morning), so I just let Kensie run around naked for a few hours. She loved it! She went and used the potty when she needed to (and when I urged her to if it had been awhile), and not one accident. Saturday morning, I got Kensie all pumped up about the panties, she got to pick them out herself, she got a bunch of new PJs, to boot—she was a happy camper with a lot of new stuff (and you know how kids love new stuff). When we got home, K pulled all the panties out of their wrappers and paraded around with them (she preferred to show them off instead of actually putting them on, which might have been a sign) as if they were $100 bills she’d found lying in the street (and she actually knew how much they were worth). I finally got her to pick a pair, we put them on her, and not an hour later, I heard Kensie in the other room burst into tears. She came running into the kitchen, urine running down her legs, screaming, “Mommy, I tinkled on the flo-ah! MOMMY, I TINKLED ON THE FLO-AH!!” After much discussion: “Baby, accidents happen.” “But I peed on the flo-ah, Mommy!” “Honey, it happens to all little kids during potty training. See how Mommy cleaned it up? It’s OK if you have an accident.” “BUT MOMMY, I PEED ON THE FLO-AH!!!” Needless to say, I decided that pushing Kensie at this point was not the best idea.

One thing I’ve learned from both my niece (who’s extremely intelligent and quite tall, but who always seems at least two years older than she is) and Kensie (who is also quite advanced and tall for her age) is that I have to remember how old they really are, not how old they seem to be. Kensie just turned two in July. TWO!! Why in the world would I put that kind of pressure on a baby (yes, she is still a baby)? After much consideration (and a framed “words of wisdom” my mother pulled out of some random box in her office waxing poetic about not pressuring people into doing things that are uncomfortable for them), I decided now just wasn’t the right time to potty-train. Though my girl is pretty advanced in many areas of life (all two of her years), she is just not ready to get rid of the diaper. So I’ll keep changing, and wiping, and putting on diaper cream, and tossing dirty diapers, and waiting until the day my baby lets me know when the time is right for her. And when that day comes, I’ll mourn the loss of my adorable baby . . . then I’ll head out and buy that new Jeep I’ve been wanting or maybe even pay off my student loans with all the extra cash I’ll suddenly have at my disposal!

The State of Our States

Right now, there is an uproar in U.S. school systems about Barack
Obama’s (our president) plan to speak to children about education on
Tuesday. Apparently, instead of urging children to work hard and stay
in school, and explaining to them how important getting an education
is, some people believe he will use this opportunity to promote his
political agenda or, get this, to “brainwash” our children. Back up,
what?

"As far as I am concerned, this is not civics education—it gives the
appearance of creating a cult of personality," said Oklahoma
Republican state Sen. Steve Russell. "This is something you'd expect to see in North Korea or in Saddam Hussein's Iraq." Cult of
Personality? Iraq? Are we talking 2009 United States or early-1900s
Russia? And this is only one quote I pulled out of the numerous news
stories generated from this “situation.”

Conservative media has been comparing Obama to Hitler. Hitler? Really? Come on!

Never mind that Bush, Sr., did the same thing in the early 90s and
Reagan during his tenure. Never mind that Obama stands for feeding the hungry, helping the sick, and promoting the general welfare of all
residents of this country. Never mind that he was elected by the
majority of United States citizens to lead this country during such a
dire time. Never mind that we live in a country of free speech where
our children are provided the education and have the right to make
educated decisions for themselves, whether shown this speech or not (though, if not shown, they are less educated and sheltered by parents who simply don’t like Obama in my opinion).

Many school systems across the country have already decided not to show this speech in their classrooms, and others are debating the
subject now. The decision those schools have made truly disappoints
me. I remember a time not so long ago when people respected their
elected leaders, Democrat or Republican. I remember a time when
schools let us watch things like, say, the space shuttle taking off
despite the possibility that it might, I don’t know, blow up right
before our young eyes. I remember a time when parents just let their
kids go to school and trusted teachers to make the right decisions. I
remember a country where politics was politics, and at the end of the
day, politicians could part as friends with a common goal—the
betterment of our country. What has happened to our country?

Yes, parents have the right to expose their children to what they feel
is appropriate and shelter them from what they feel is not. I’m a
parent, and I know how important that right is. But not allowing a
child to view the president of his country talk about the importance
of education and encourage him to stay in school just because you
didn’t vote for him and have different political views is going way
too far. That is what I think is going on in this situation, and,
frankly, it’s childish. Grow up America!

This is just my opinion.

To Flu or Not To Flu

In the parenting world, vaccinations are a huge issue. Whether to vaccinate your child is a very important—and very personal—issue. So last week, when one of our local schools (to which, I might add, one of my coworker's kids attends and has been out sick for days) had 25 percent of its children out with flu-like symptoms, I decided it was time to make the decision: Do I or do I not give Kensie the flu vaccination?

Let me back up a bit. Before Kensie was born, I did a lot of research on vaccinating and came to the conclusion that, for the time being, breast-feeding was the best way to go. When K was born, I did not allow the doctors to administer the Hepatitis B vaccine that they pushed on me right after her birth because it is a blood- and bodily fluid–borne virus, I did not have Hepatitis B myself and could therefore not have transferred it to her, and she was not likely to be sexually active anytime in the near future. I believe strongly that introducing foreign particles into a newborn child’s undeveloped immune system has the possibility of doing great harm, and I wasn’t about to subject my child to that danger.

When it came time for the first round of shots at about three months old, I made sure that all of Kensie’s shots were administered unbundled and spread out (meaning separate shots, not one that contained all three vaccines [DTP], and each spread out over several weeks). I also made sure that none contained thimerosal, a preservative thought to be a factor in the onset of autism. From my research, this decision would prevent overwhelming her under-developed immune system while still giving her the security she needed from the vaccine, as well as helping protecting her from the possibility of contracting an autoimmune disorder down the road. With this decision, I had very little support from the medical community. My doctor nor any of her nurses offered support and, in fact, were pretty ugly to me when I told them to hold off on certain vaccines and asked that they stray from their regular “procedures” for my child; but I stuck to my guns. Again, I chose to hold off on Hepatitis B for the same reason as before, and I also chose against the Polio and Rotavirus vaccines (though a friend of mine’s little one got Rotavirus, and it was not pretty). So Kensie ended up initially getting the DTP and Hib vaccines.

At six months old, Kensie got the routine vaccines she had gotten before (DTP and Hib), but I still laid off on the rest, as I was still breast-feeding and felt she was getting the protection she needed from my breast milk.

At her one-year appointment, I decided it was time to go ahead with the Polio and Rotavirus vaccines, mainly because wild strains of Polio do exist and can spread through the community quickly, as it did in the early 1900s, and become an epidemic if many are left unvaccinated. But also, I was no longer breast-feeding and providing Kensie with the security of my vaccinations. (My girlfriend’s story about her child getting the Rotavirus was all I needed on that one.)

So now, at two years old, I have to make a decision about the flu vaccination. And with all that’s in the news about the flu, the swine flu, wild variations of flu being found everyday, it’s a tough decision to make. I see stories all the time (a recent Dateline episode convinced me I had made the right decision about unbundling and spreading out K’s vaccines early on) about vaccinating and autism—about how the numbers of cases of autoimmune diseases are rising at an enormous rate while no one really seems to know what’s causing these new “disorders” that are affecting so many of our children today. And it's hard to know what to believe!

The first thing I did was call the doctor and make an appointment for K to get the vaccine. All parents know how hard it can be to get a doctor’s appointment (especially nonemergency), and if I decided I want to get Makensie vaccinated, I wanted to be able to do it ASAP. Then I began to do research (as I had done in the beginning). I’m a huge fan of Heather Armstrong’s blog dooce.com, so I decided to check there first. On her homepage was a “Momversation” about whether flu shots will make your child sick (lucky break!). I watched that, and most of those moms, including Heather, planned to vaccinate the entire family.

Next, I googled “Flu Mist” (Kensie’s doctor only offers the mist, which, to me, sounds a lot better than a shot, being my kid’s only two years old). On the CDC site, it explained that the FluMist® is better in that it’s not a shot (score for Kensie), and some studies show it may even be better at protecting from the flu than the actual shot (score for Kensie and Mommy). However, it does contain live virus, which the shot does not (that makes me nervous, as somehow, every time I get the flu shot, I get sick even though they swear it’s not the flu, and that has no live virus!), though it is weakened and supposedly cannot cause the flu. The side effects seem minimal (though nothing is minimal to a two-year-old who doesn’t get why she’s feeling so terrible): runny nose, headache, wheezing, vomiting, muscle aches, sore throat, cough, and fever. But children (up to 9) have to get two doses, one and then another a month or so later, and then protection doesn’t start for a couple of weeks after the second dose. Note from CDC: “If your child needs the two doses, begin the process early, so that children are protected before influenza starts circulating in your community.” Um, a little too late for that here!

So, I’ve decided that Kensie needs to get the flu shot, and right away! Her appointment is Thursday, so about November, when the flu season has been in full bloom for a few months and swine flu has reared its ugly head in just about every school in Alabama, Kensie will be protected.

No matter how hard you try or how early you get a jump on things as a parent, it seems as if you never try hard enough and never begin early enough. And just when you think you’ve got it all under control, the universe hits you with the swine flu!