Shotgun Daddy

Jinx

A few days ago I forgot about how the world works.

If you've been paying attention, you know that Henry's potty training process has been going for quite some time now. The good news is that although there have been several setbacks, we're definitely getting closer to that day when we'll finally be able to put the diapers away for good. He tells us now when he has to go to the bathroom instead of waiting to be asked, and I don't remember the last accident he's had during the day, but bedtime has been a problem.

When we first ditched the diapers a few months ago we were surprized that he never wet the bed, but that soon changed. It took a few weeks of washing his sheets every day before we finally decided to put him in a diaper when he went to bed. It was nice, but I always felt like we were giving up.

So last week, after noticing that he had been waking up with a dry diaper every morning for several days, I secretly decided to put him to bed with underwear. The sheets were dry the next morning. And the next, and the next, and the next. We've turned the corner, I thought, and it was so easy!

And then came my mistake. Leslie was putting him to bed on Night Four of the Dry Era, and since she was unaware of my Secret Diaper Embargo, she was preparing to put him in a diaper. So what did I do? I casually mentioned that Henry hadn't been wearing diapers to bed anymore. I was so proud.

So guess what happened the next morning? And the next?

You know exactly what happened -- I got what I deserved. The sheets were wet both mornings, which was enough for me to learn my lesson. I put Henry to bed a few hours ago, and you can be sure that he went to bed wearing a diaper. I'm not sure when I'll be confident enough to say goodnight to him without first wrapping him in a Huggy, but I am sure of one thing: when I do, I won't say a word to anyone.

A Small Good Thing

I have nothing clever to say here, just a few thoughts...

Years from now, when my youngest daughter has survived the usual quota of skinned knees and broken hearts to arrive at her wedding day, I'm quite certain that she and I will share a dance. Her heart will be full of love, and her mind will be racing towards the future, but I will see only the past. As we dance together in front of our family and friends, it will seem absolutely impossible that the woman my daughter has become was once an infant in my arms. Most of the memories that will overwhelm me at that moment are yet to occur, but there's one image that I already know will be playing in my head.

One of my favorite things in the world right now is that when Kate's having a bottle when she's feeling tired, her hands always come up to cover her face. Her tiny palms open wide over her drooping eyelids, and I never tire of filling them with kisses.

These are the moments I hope never to forget.

It's Not Nice to Put Poo-Poo on Other People

Where have you gone, Shotgun Daddy? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you...

Nowhere, really. We've just been a bit busy lately, and the writing I've had time for has gone in another direction, but leave it to my boy to pull me right back in.

I take you back to Saturday night, not because I want to relive the memory but because I hope that if I tell the story out loud it might turn out to be a dream from which I will awaken.

And so the story begins like most good stories, after dinner on Saturday night. Baby Kate was already in bed, and Leslie and I were doing our best to corral Henry and Alison, both of whom were a bit fussier than usual. The good news, though, was that they had already had baths and changed into pajamas. Lots of bad news would follow.

I don't remember exactly what Henry did, but let's pretend that he knocked over a chair which then landed on his sister's toe, causing her to burst into flames. (It's the one detail of the story which is a bit hazy, but it's entirely likely that that's actually what happened. And anyway, the haziness is comforting. Maybe it really was a dream.)

So whatever it was that Henry did, it warranted a timeout. I lifted him up, carried him to his room, and closed the door in hopes that his muffled screams wouldn't wake his sleeping sister. After three or four minutes of incessant wailing, I went back to check on him and I found him standing in a puddle of urine.

Henry likes this passive/aggressive pee-pee strategy. Either he hasn't yet figured out that a call for the potty during a timeout is like a get out of jail free card, or he would just rather piss me off by pissing on the floor. Regardless of his motivation (or lack of motivation), I found myself standing face to face with my dear son, tears running down his cheeks, urine running down his legs. Damn.

So I picked him up, carried him down the hall, and deposited him in the tub for his second bath of the night, just a quick splash to clean him up from the waist down. Even though it was still not quite bedtime, I put him in some new pajamas and dropped him in bed.

Satisfied that the night's trauma was behind me, I settled down on the couch to drown myself in television; I don't think I stayed awake much past ten as I fell asleep to the lullaby of ESPN...

And then suddenly it was the middle of the night and Henry was calling me. "Daddy... Daddy... Daddy..." I'm not sure how I can explain this next part. Have you ever realized the answer to something before you even knew you were asking the question? As I heard his sleepy voice echoing down the hallway I knew exactly what had happened.

When I had put him to bed five hours earlier I was still so pissed off, so eager to say goodnight to him, that I had forgotten to put a diaper on him. Tired of washing his sheets, we decided a few weeks ago to start putting diapers on Henry at night. He had awoken with a dry diaper every morning for at the least the last week or two, but when I heard him calling me, I instantly knew that he had wet his bed.

Of course, I was right.

Again, I carried him down the hall to the bathroom where I stripped him down and rinsed him off before bringing him back to his room for a third pair of pajamas. Almost reflexively, Henry sat down on the floor to wait as I stripped his bed and remade it. (I know, I know, the books say he should help. But my guess is that the authors of those books never tried to convince a tired four-year-old to change a bed while three other people were trying to sleep in the same house.) He crawled into bed and went back to sleep as soon as the bed was made. I took his sheets, comforter, and pajamas out to the garage and tossed them into the washer. We all slept until morning.

But the dream continued.

About an hour after breakfast there was... a movement. A great basketball player is often described as "having a clock in his head," meaning that he knows how many seconds are left in the game without having to look at the clock, an awareness that comes from years of playing the game. Great parents are no different. I've got a huge clock in my head, a Big Ben kinda clock that starts ticking like crazy the longer Henry goes between... movements.

And so about an hour after breakfast Henry walked casually past me and I caught a whiff of something suspicious.

"Henry, did you go poo-poo?"
"Yes."

Damn. He had a rock in his pants the size of a grapefruit. Damn. Damn. The good news, though, is that when your child drops a load, you know you've got a while before you have to start worrying about the next one, kind of like when they push that button down in the hatch on Lost and the numbers scroll all the way back to 108. So we took a breath and got on with the rest of our day.

Two hours later (or was it 108 minutes later?) Alison came running out of Henry's room screaming.

"Henry put poo-poo on me!!"
"What?"
"Henry put poo-poo on me, here on my pants!!!"

Of course, I knew this was impossible, because my clock wasn't ticking yet, not even close.

"Where did he get the poo-poo from?"
"From his pants!!"

Christ.

So I took the long walk back to Henry's room, dreading what I might find. Henry was lying on his bed, staring out the window with a terribly satisfied impish grin on his face.

"Did you put poo-poo on Alison?"
"Yes."

Could this be possible? I turned him over on his stomach and tugged on the waistband of his pants, looking for confirmation. I cursed, Henry giggled. His pants were full.

There are things I know I'll say to my children some day, lines that I've practiced again and again. Things like this: "I don't care how cute that boy is or how cool his motorcycle is, you're not getting on the back of it." But every once in a while I'll say something that no one in his right mind should ever say. Something that no one in the history of the world has ever said before or will ever say again.

As I took Henry's clothes off in preparation for yet another bath, here's what I said:

"It's not nice to put poo-poo on other people."

I really said that. His response? "Okay, Daddy."

And as I was wiping him (it was particularly messy), he added this gem:
"Don't forget to wipe my peanuts, Daddy."

It would be nice if I could tell you that at this point the alarm went off and I woke up from the dream laughing, but I did not. Sadly, this was no dream. Either that, or I'm still sleeping.