Potty training

For the record it's a course I already completed, though the degree was awarded at some obscenely late age, and I distinctly remember sitting in front of my grandmother's heater hoping that the pj's would dry out before anyone noticed. That's neither here nor there. The primary point is, we're not potty training.

But we're talking about potty training. We're like the pitching coach out on the mound signaling to the pen that someone should warm up. He's not actually calling in the pitcher, he's just having a polite discussion about the possibility of making a change. In my day, I don't watch baseball anymore, pitching coaches almost all had mustaches, and I'm picturing him twirling it as he thinks about whether to bring in Rick Vaughn.

We're talking about potty training because we've got a second child on the way and one thing you always here is how hard it is to have two in diapers.

"Two in diapers. Forget it. You might as well wade into a pen full of pig shi-"

"Two in diapers is like having a picnic planned, but it rains that day, and ants are taking shelter underneath the tree with you, and also two of your kids have poopy diapers." (Not everyone I've spoken to about this particular issue is knowledgeable or deft at creating metaphors).

"Having two kids in diapers is like having your left pointer finger sawed through very slowly."

I could go on, but I don't want to scare you. This is the sort of thing about which parents like to tell other parents horror stories. It's a strange thing and cal also create a weird sort of bond. It's probably the closest I'll get to a large number of people engaged in a similar sort of Very Hard Thing as I am. I'm not fit for war as the closest I've gotten was watching Sergeant Alvin York take down an entire battalion of Germans.

The fact of the matter is, and here I'm quoting from a piece of literature or errata that I don't entirely remember, is that kids in foreign countries are often potty trained by 1.5 years. This is apparently skewed by them not wearing diapers, a fact which apparently makes potty training easier, something about whisking away urine, which is the sort of conversation you'll find parents having, whisking away of urine. And if you're not having that sort of conversation then you're probably doing something wrong. (See, this is the sort of non-encouraging encouragement that parents give one another. "It's all worth it though.")

S is not sure that s is ready for potty training. Apparently it's easiest to do it when they are two and half. It's my understanding, from my wife's harangues, (probably not the most charitable word choice) that children, when they reach two and a half, suddenly develop the ability to comprehend what a toilet is for and why central plumbing was such an important invention for the rise of humanity in general. I imagine that the potty training is less a battle waged in the bathroom and more a polite lecture delivered in the classroom to a toddler who is suddenly transformed from someone who says "want it" roughly 500 times a day, to a scholar who wears bifocals and wants to know about the chance of having a composting toilet put in. This may all be fictional. I don't know. It's my first kid.