Author: Shannon

There are two smells in our house right now competing for the attention of my olfactory nerves.

The first is the smell of dirt that’s taken over the entire first floor of the house after Matt re-potted the peace lily yesterday.  This desperately needed to be done, but wow.  Who knew fertilized dirt could be so fragrant without being straight from the source, so to speak?

The second is the overwhelming, unbelievable stench emanating from Liam’s mouth.  You know how kids transform overnight from sweaty children with an odor that’s still (somehow) clean into stinky tweens with whom someone needs to have the deodorant talk?  Well something’s happened to Liam’s breath after he consumes garlic (hummus being the most recent culprit).  He used to eat hummus by the bucketload and no one would have been any the wiser if they weren’t changing his diapers.  Now?  Now if I feed him hummus for lunch I go back in to get him after his nap and am greeted by an ungodly wall of stench.  Seriously.  It almost brought me to my knees.

I’m afraid that the loser in this battle is neither the dirt nor the halitosis, it’s me.

Today I was all psyched up for a bacon and tomato sandwich.  I actually found some hothouse tomatoes at the store that taste like tomatoes (I mean, nothing tastes like fresh summer tomatoes, but it’s February and I was jonesing for a BT sandwich, so there you go) and I cooked up an entire package of turkey bacon for the occasion.  My bread was all toasted and I was getting ready to cut my tomatoes when Liam asked for a piece of bacon.  I gave him one.  Apparently he liked the flavor because by the time I turned around again he had stuffed most of it in his mouth.

Anyone who has spent any time around Liam knows that his one major issue in life has always been (and unfortunately continues to be) eating.  He never latched properly when he was a baby.  He had trouble with choking even with the slowest of slow nipples.  We ended up taking him to a specialist and (an enormous amount of money later) found that he has trouble with sensitivity in his mouth, specifically his cheeks.  He gets ahead of himself when eating and he ends up with far too much food in his mouth.  We were basically told to work with him on recognizing that there is a lot of food in there since his cheeks don’t send that message to his brain on their own.  Things have largely been okay, but I don’t really see there being too much improvement until he’s old enough to realize on his own that there’s too much in his mouth.  It’s (part of) the reason he still wears a bib with a little pocket in it: sometimes he just realizes (far too late) that there’s too much food in his cheeks and his natural response is to spit it out and start again with a clean slate/fresh palate.

Lately this has taken a (disgusting) new turn.  I guess I should be grateful that although his cheeks aren’t sensitive in the way they should be, his gag reflex works just fine.  That’s what I keep trying to tell myself as he repeatedly puts too much in his mouth, chokes on whatever’s in there, and then proceeds to vomit up whatever he’s just eaten.  But you know what?  It’s really hard to enjoy a bacon and tomato sandwich when you’ve just finished cleaning up bacon vomit.

I guess it’s back to Lean Cuisines for me…

Why is it that when *Matt* is the one traveling for work (and therefore waking up at 4:30), *Shannon* wakes up at 12:30, 1:30, 2:30, 3:30, and 4:15.  Why is it that *Matt* sleeps like a baby when *Matt* is the one without acid reflux and therefore can drink copious amounts of coffee if need be?

Does coffee ice cream have caffeine in it?

I think that maybe Liam shouldn’t be allowed to eat Raisin Bran or Shredded Wheat until he’s wiping his own behind.  Just a thought.

Liam:  Da!  [pause, waiting for answer]  Da!

Shannon:  Dad went to work half an hour ago, Liam.  Do you need something?

Liam:  Mama!

Shannon:  Yes?

Liam:  I needa practice my baseball!

Shannon:  You do?

Liam:  I needa practice my soccer!

Shannon:  Okay.  Your dad would love to practice those things with you when he gets home.  Just remember to ask him when he gets here, okay?

Liam:  I’m a STAR!

Shannon:  Undoubtedly.

As it turns out, the initial key to potty training is training the parents.  Every kid learns in a different way.  Some people have success with the one day potty bootcamp approach.  Some parents wait until the child is old enough to say they’re ready to use the potty.  Some parents spend months and months working on gradually teaching the child to learn their body’s signals.  Still others work and work and try several different approaches only to end up with a 4 year-old who refuses to use the toilet (for one reason or another).  The real catch is that no solution works for every child and the parents are a much bigger X-Factor than anyone really thinks about when they’re in the moment.  Because in the moment?  It’s frustrating.

I was lucky enough to have had the chance to work with a child in my care on potty training.  In his case it was a lot easier because his parents waited until he was older than average so he was already more aware of his bodily functions and had the benefit of watching his friends at school as they learned to use the potty.  I basically gave the kid massive amounts of fluids and spent a couple of days hanging out in the bathroom (followed by several weeks of him running around without any britches on) and he got it.  There were accidents, of course, but in general he grasped the concept right off the bat.

Lately we’ve been trying to figure out the best approach to use with Liam.  It’s cold, so running around naked isn’t as easy (or comfortable) as it will be in a few months.  Familiarity and regularity are key concepts, so we’ve begun making regular trips to the toilet (at the same time each day) to sit for a while and read a book and see if anything comes about.  We’re trying to make it as low pressure and fun as possible without slipping back into our earlier pattern of Liam saying he needed to go to the potty all day long (when he didn’t) because he knew that we would read to him, because sitting in the bathroom all day isn’t fun for us and it’s not really teaching him anything, either.  For several days I’ve been trying to put him on the potty at times that he’d go after he’s trained (right now that means before and after naps, and I figured we’d move on from there after some success).

The timing before his nap is more about teaching him that we try to go to the bathroom before going to bed.  The timing after his nap was a new addition because I’d noticed that his poop pattern had begun to be that he’d wake up from his nap, I’d change his diaper, and almost immediately he’d poop.  Aside from wasting diapers and increasing time on the changing table, this had the positive effect of triggering the idea to try potty time immediately after waking.  And today, boys and girls?  Today, it worked.

I put him on that toilet and made it through only a couple of pages of Mister Rogers’ potty book and like clockwork, he went.  I, of course, made a huge deal out of it (he’s been wandering around for the last 45 minutes spontaneously saying “Mama SO proud!  I go poop in da potty!”) so I think he absorbed something positive from the experience (at least I hope so).

Now if I could only figure out when he’s peeing…