I clearly have superior parenting skills.

Braden is fully toilet trained.

I say this and feel odd, as if I’m talking about having gotten the puppy completely house trained. But yeah, it’s a lot like that, considering he used to piss on the floor pretty regularly.

And before you (I’m talking to “you,” the person who has spare time in his/her life to make asshat comments on posts because you hate yourself and you’re taking it out on others) go making some bitchass comment about how that wouldn’t have happened if I’d not let him run around naked all the time, please to be looking at this: click here for a special, pre-valentine’s day gift of love from me to you.

In all seriousness, though, leave any comment your heart desires.  I like it rough.

Also, I fully expect gratuitous thank you’s from ALL of you because for a split second, I considered posting Avitaballs as the link up there.

YOU’RE WELCOME.

Now we can move on.

So, Braden has been reliably doing all business on the toilet for quite some time now, but you’ll have to forgive me for not talking about that as the progress/training was ongoing. If you have children you know the rule: IF YOU CELEBRATE IT TOO SOON, THE UNIVERSE WILL PUNISH YOU WITH A SWIFT REGRESSION.

It is only now, after such a long time, that I feel safe telling you…

MY KID GOES ON THE TOILET! MY KID GOES ON THE TOILET! I DON’T HAVE TO WASH DIAPERS ANYMORE! I DON’T HAVE TO WASH SHITTY AND PISSY UNDERPANTS ANYMORE! THERE AREN’T PUDDLES OF URINE ON THE FLOOR IN THE BATHROOM ANYMORE! I DON’T HAVE TO PULL DOWN TINY UNERPANTS FULL OF BROWNIE BATTER ANYMORE!

When he can actually wipe his own ass, I think I’ll bake him a fuckin’ cake.

Now, having said all this, we *do* have occasional pee accidents because he has taken to doing the very same thing his Mommy does. He gets all wrapped up in something and he can’t.stop.and.go.pee.

Ladies and Gentlemen, my son is a Pee Holder.

He pretty much refuses to stop what he’s doing until he reaches CODE RED. At that point, he’s running to the bathroom like his testicles are on fire and sometimes he ends up wetting his pants while he’s right in front of the toilet trying to pull them down.

Which, yes, is maddening, and I’m all, “DUDE. You finally learned how to do this really well, don’t go screwing it up by waiting too long. Don’t wait, come right to the toilet!”

To which he replies, “What? All I know is that I’m totally going to forget everything you just said except that part where you said ‘don’t go screwing it up’ and I’m gonna yell that at top volume in public, repeatedly, the first time it seems like it might be really embarrassing for you. I might add in that word you said in the car the other day, too. ‘Asshole,’ right? Right. Now go wash my underpants, beesh.”

So, okay, yeah. I admit there are still a few accidents here and there. And the occasional shart. Which is really just funny, quite frankly, because he says, “Oooh, Braden pooped in pants,” and then quickly follows that with “It’s okay, it’s JustUhShart!”

It’s all par for the course.  Most of the time, things are now clean and dry around here, and I couldn’t be happier about that.

I have to admit that the Sentimental Mommy side of me does miss seeing that chubby hiney he used to flash as he ran around the house threatening carpets from wall to wall. Just a little.

But sometimes, we have special moments like the one that happened the other day:

Braden: *fidgeting in living room*

Me: “Do you have to pee?”

Braden: “Yes.”

Me: “Go to the bathroom.”

Braden: *doing the hammer dance in the living room*

Me: “What are you doing!? Go to the bathroom and PEE!”

Braden: “No, I DANCING FIRST.”

Me: *trying not to laugh. failing miserably*

Hey, at least he has his priorities. Sometimes, before you go to the bathroom, you just have to say, “STOP. HAMMERTIME.”

I stand by my celebration.  Because that? Is clearly a sign of superior parenting.

I only teach him the most important things.

And if you don’t think this is important, you wouldn’t fit in around here at all.

And I fart in your general direction.

About menstruation, armpit hair, floaters, etc…. oh, and writing well.

So, I’ve been quite brilliantly not writing near as often as I used to here for some time now. I’m perfecting this art I like to call “Ignore Your Blog Until It Dies.” I think I’m doing a *really* good job. Only, I keep popping back into frame and, you know, it’s because I love you. And because I like to run my proverbial mouth write. Also, a little bit because of how good you look in those jeans, and that you’re kind of slutty. But mostly the thing about how I like to write. Yeah.

I used to post something every day – and while I’m not interested in pushing myself to a “per day” schedule anymore, I do want to get back to writing more often. And because she’s awesome like that, Leslie (aka Mrs. Flinger) has been thinking of this whole “let’s get back to writing” thing, only she actually wants it to be GOOD WRITING (oh, shit) and after several email brainstorming sessions with a group of amazing women (I think someone added my name to the email list by accident, but I wasn’t going to rat myself out) there’s a little movement, or community, going.

Leslie has launched a Ning site to fuel this, and it’s called {W}rite of Passage: taking the challenge to write well.

So I’m jumping in. I’m going to take the challenges and post my shitty drafts in answer to them here for you to look at and laugh while you point and say, “this shit is supposed to be good writing? BAHAHAHAHA.”

Of course, instead of just being a turd, you could join the network and get your ass in gear, too.

Today’s Challenge? Embarrassing story.

And you know, I am having a little bit of difficulty coming up with a topic because I never have embarrassing things happen to me, and I never do embarrassing things.  I have a hard time even understanding what this whole “being embarrassed” thing is like.  I am poised, confident, and graceful.  Whether by luck, chance, or higher power, I am immune to awkward situations.  All of the stories of my life are calm, without incident, and there is truly a spirit of class and dignity that surrounds all that is moi.

Also, pigs fly out of my butt and there’s a unicorn eating rainbow striped cotton candy on my back lawn, right next to the leprechaun who is counting out all the gold he’s going to leave on my front step later today. Now, excuse me, because it’s time for me to go climb on the back of my friendly, neighborhood dragon and go for our regularly scheduled flying playdate with Peter Pan and Mary Poppins.

I am having trouble because I’ve already written here about all the most embarrassing topics that come to mind immediately.  Like when my mother announced that I’d started my period in front of our male, European house guests.

Who do you tell?  If you’re like me, you tell your mother.  And you don’t enjoy it.  But you get it over with, and then you expect it to go away.

You don’t expect to be washing the dishes after dinner, minding your own business, and have your mother practically float into the room on her Mommy Pride and gush about it to the two MALE, European house guests sitting at the kitchen table.

They speak very little English, but you quickly see that they have perfected that Creepy Guy Look Of Knowing And Thinking Ew Things, because they are aiming it right at you.  Picture it, right now.  If your skin didn’t crawl, you don’t know what I’m talking about.

I.Couldn’t.Believe.She.Had.Done.That.

She CLEARLY hated me. I was SURE of it.

I just wanted to DIE.

Or the story of my first pit hairs.  Yeah.

I remember when I first started getting armpit hair.

I was mortified.

My mom?  Was excited.

I was sitting on her bed, with my hands behind my head, all chilled out, leaning back.  I can remember her noticing the armpit hair and pointing it out, smiling and gesturing.  The expression on my face had to have been one of complete and total terror.  She, on the other hand, was dangerously close to suggesting we should have a parade for my pit hair.

I could see myself on the lead Pit Hair Parade! float, my arms strapped up and to the sides.  Large spotlights would aim at my pits and flower adorned arrows would be positioned to point right at the tiny hairs there, in case people were not aware that LOTUS.HAS.PIT.HAIR.NOW!!!

I slapped my arms down, and tried to change the subject, while mentally willing with all my might that time would just stop.  Maybe God really did exist and I could pray to him right now to erase this?

Because it was embarrassing.

Or maybe you’ll remember when I talked about how I made sure that John would truly fall madly in love with me, one day becoming my husband.  I had a foolproof plan, really.  All you dating ladies should try this out on your man.

John told me that when we were first dating, he had an interesting experience. He was visiting me at my apartment in Winston-Salem, NC. We had been hanging out, laughing, having fun, etc. He had to pee. He got up… walked down the hallway, and went into the bathroom. Closing the door, he turned around, and lifted the toilet seat.

And witnessed a large, brown floater.

Sexy or what?

And you’re probably thinking that I *forgot* to flush.  Ah, foolish one.  Everyone knows that Surprise Shit is the way to a man’s heart. It’s either that or food. Or blowjobs. Or something. Clearly I’m an expert.

When it comes right down to it, a great many of my embarrassing situations don’t really stand out because they are the majority of the strands that weave the I’m A Dumbass Idiot tapestry of my life.  It all just blends together to create the badass that is Loter.

So what if I’ve puked on the side of the highway in my underpants?  Big deal if I drove a car up past the parking space and actually right into the wall of a building once?  No problem if I leave my wallet at home when I go shopping, hold bows up to my crotch in department stores, lose my car in parking lots, say horribly stupid things to people in practically any social situation, walk into doors and fences, or melt my food processor in my oven because I was too lazy to clean it and instead shoved it in there so I wouldn’t have to look at it anymore and then forgot and preheated the oven for dinner while it was still inside, like a completely idiotic assface? So what if I write long, run-on sentences just because I like the way they sound in my head and think you should, too?

So what? I am still awesome.

And I’d love to delude myself talk about that in detail, but I really have to go now.  I need to put on my magical, vanilla-scented Invisibility Suit and take my pet dinosaur for a walk down our gold-paved street.

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Here are more people who took the “Embarrassing Story” Challenge today.

Join up at {W}rite-Of-Passage and then add yours, too!

Time, Work, Need. It’s all relative.

John is gone and has been for weeks; he won’t be home still for some time. It’s okay. I miss him and Braden misses him, but the truth is that we’re used to him being away a lot. We have a rhythm we get into while he’s away.

Of course, after a while, Mommy gets a little cranky and somewhat tiredish. Braden and I do get along well. We have fun and I laugh even when he’s a turd. When he’s a brat, I am firm and I’m not afraid or unable to administer discipline. But it gets hard sometimes for me to reel in my anger when he’s really difficult, especially when I’m particularly, ahem, hormonal.

I’ve gotten to that point this week, and I’m needing some time for a break, a bit of quiet, and oh yeah, I have work to get done! I get frustrated at the lack of time for myself. I get Teh Selfish on me.

Today is rainy, again. Today is a bit colder again. He is annoyed that I am staying on the couch a lot this morning because my uterus is once again suffering for the sins of Eve (Hey, Eve, ya bitch, apples aren’t even THAT GOOD. I mean, I could understand if it had been friggin’ TIRAMISU or something, but really? Oh well.) and I’m Grumpy Tired.

He’s spending the morning running around the room throwing toys at me. He’s asking me to come outside. I’m being a jerk, telling him Mommy is too tired. We play ball while I sit on the couch. It’s fun, until I get hit in the titty. Then it’s hilarious. But painful. Ouch.

Naptime comes and I can tell he’s not ready; he’s too wound up. I let it slide for an extra thirty minutes. Then I pick him up and he whines. There are protests. I meet them with a favorite book and he slumps in my arms, tension flowing away, talking about Fluffy and Baron in excited anticipation.

We read and then the lights go out. We snuggle under a blankie and I rock as the lullaby CD plays in the background.

I wait for him to fall asleep so I can get some things done.

He is restless. He talks and I remind him that “naptime is quiet.” He whispers.

I wait for him to fall asleep because I really need to get some things done.

I close my eyes and rock, holding him close, feeling the tension in him as he moves around trying to find a position that feels sleepy, but it’s not coming to him.

I will never get things done!

I am frustrated. The minutes are stretching into forevers and I have work to get done. I want him to stop wasting my time. I want him to quit being annoying and just go to sleep.

I open my eyes and look down at his little face. His head is resting in the crook of my left arm and he is looking up at me. He is grinning to himself over jokes in his head. I feel annoyed because he does not look tired at all. I look at him with disdain. His eyes sparkle back at me. For a moment there is a new tension in his small body and then there is the undeniable sound of a toddler fart above the enchanting lullabies.

For a split second, we are frozen, eyes locked, our faces inches away from one another.

We both burst into laughter, giggling madly, still close to one another. He is delighted that I am laughing with him. I am defeated that he broke my quiet naptime stoicism, but in a pleasant way. The unexpected mirth feels good.

It falls quiet again. He is whispering to himself. He snuggles closer and traces the letters that stand out on my shirt. I close my eyes and rock as the lullabies keep drifting around us. His fingers fall on the hollow spot right at the bottom of my neck, tapping.

They become still and I open my eyes. He is looking up at me and suddenly his little palm rises from my chest and warmly rests on my cheek. He presses lightly and murmurs a cooing sound of “mmmmmms” that has always meant “i love you,” since before he could say words.

That feeling that comes right before an emotional sob rises in my chest, blurs behind my eyes.  There is love and regret and guilt. It recedes and I just look at him.

His little hand slowly drops back to my chest and curls there. I put my palm on his cheek – something that has always calmed him.

His eyes are heavy and his lashes flutter like butterflies that can’t find the courage to land.

They finally rest and I listen as his breaths grow deeper and longer.

He is asleep now.  I touch his soft chin with my finger, and I linger in the chair.

Suddenly there is no work and I lose track of time just staring at him.

I can’t think of a thing I really need to do right now.

Crazy crap a mother says out loud.

Just a sampling.

I said every one of these damn things out loud in the span of 3 days last week.
Not necessarily in this order.
Enjoy.

• Do NOT put that in your mouth.
• Don’t sit on the table.
• Stop yelling.
• Pee goes in the toilet.
• That’s not nice.
• The dog doesn’t like to be kicked.
• No matter how many times you scream, you’ll still have to take a nap.
• But that’s what you just asked me for.
• You pooped in your pants?
• STOP.SAYING.NO.
• Why did you put that in there?
• No, I won’t kiss your poo poo bum. (????)
• Hahaha. Ok, really, don’t honk Mommy’s boobies. Hahahahahaha.
• Seriously, you really did just ask me for this exact thing, why are screaming no when I give you what you wanted?
• That is NOT edible.
• You can’t fly!!!
• I have no idea what you’re talking about. Repeating doesn’t help.
• If you stand on that again I will take it away from you.
• No, we are not going in the car. We just got out of it.
• No, Daddy doesn’t drive a bus. He RIDES on it.
• You are being too loud.
• You need to go make a pee pee. Yes, you do! Then why are you dancing and holding your crotch?
• Get your fingers out of your mouth.
• Why did you spit on that?
• No, you may not spank my bum.
• You already flushed 3 times.
• Yes, you have to wash your hands.
• Please do not lick your hands.
• It’s ok to use the toilet in public, it won’t hurt you.
• No, that is a tampon. Give it back to Mommy, please.
• Do not fill up your mouth with milk and then let it drool out onto the floor on purpose.
• That is not dry.
• Don’t hit people with your head!
• What is that smell?
• I have no idea what you’re trying to say. I’m as frustrated as you are, REALLY.
• The dog also cannot fly. Really.
• It’s “WaNt the foRk,” dear. The N and the R really need to be pronounced.
• Some people don’t like it when you yell at them about their boobies.
• Say you’re sorry. You need to say, “Sorry for locking you out, Mommy.”
• That is NOT where you use your crayons.
• You are not supposed to ride on that.
• It’s not nice to smear your poop on the mirror.
• The ball will not come out from under the table no matter how loudly you scream at it.
• I will not respond to you if you don’t stop growling and screaming.
• Time out for 2 minutes for *insert an endless list of reasons*
• If you keep screaming, you’ll get another 2 minutes.
• I think you just said NO for the 239,785,349,823rd time. Stop it.
• Do NOT tell ME to stop it.
• Nice.
• Mommy needs a time out now.
• It is going to last MUCH LONGER THAN 2 MINUTES.
• And I am totally going to scream so I’ll get more time.

Lazy Douche Enablers: Shawn of Backpacking Dad

Lazy Douche Enablers write guest posts for me every other Tuesday. That way, I can be a much better… you guessed it: Lazy Douche. I’ve been such a LD lately, that I hadn’t been posting the LD posts people wrote for me awhile back. One might say I don’t NEED the help. Regardless… Today’s Enabler is Shawn, of Backpacking Dad.

Hot Babysitter

My daughter is almost two years old. During her life we’ve left her with a babysitter exactly zero times, until last week.

A professional babysitter, I mean. We’ve had family or friends watch her while we stole an evening or even a weekend away on our own. But we could never get our act together enough to actually find some high school or college kid to come over after the kid was sleeping to eat all of our food while inviting his or her friends over to engage in hijinks.

At first it was because she was our baby! How can we leave our baby with a stranger? Later it was because, enh, we’d kind of gotten used to only sporadic alone time. And even later it was because how could anyone be competent at this? We’d been training for two years to take care of a kid our daughter’s age; how was some kid who couldn’t even vote or drink going to be qualified to do this job?

It never occurred to me that what I ought to have been worried about was having a hot babysitter. But this is a theme in the suburbs.

Before I do any more typing here I should say that the person about whom I am writing is definitely over 18, and I have every confidence she is also over 21. Not to diminish the general creepy old man factor involved in this post at all, but I hope to at least keep it from landing me in jail. She’s old enough to smoke, and she’s in college. Don’t call the cops.

Anyway….

We had hired her once to help grandma watch the kid at a friend’s house while the friends were also going away for an evening, leaving their daughter in grandma’s care as well. It was a good opportunity to vet a sitter in a controlled environment. But I never met her. My wife took care of the arrangements. Our friends, however, made a point of telling me that she was hot. Because they’re shit-disturbers.

Needing a sitter for an afternoon when our daughter was too sick for daycare we invited her over for a few hours. I was already out of the house when she arrived, but I would be the first one home, so my first meeting with our hot babysitter would be solo.

Well hell.

I walked in the door and my daughter came running over to me, smiling from ear to ear. They’d been watching Nemo and Cars and jumping around the apartment loudly enough that the downstairs neighbour dragged herself out of her sick bed to ask them to keep it down. A grand old time was had by all.

And the babysitter? Yes, hot. Totally smoke-burned voice, though, that I recognized too well from my days of hanging out with the cool kids smoking behind the school.

And the house reeked. It reeked. But not of cigarette smoke.

Not of any kind of smoke. That would have gotten her fired, but I’d at least have understood. Kids are boring sometimes and you just want to help them become interesting by frying your brain a little.

No, the house reeked of a desperate assault on the bathroom. It reeked of gut-rotted, whiskey shits.

Hello babysitter. My my, you are pretty cute. But what the fuck did you do to my bathroom?

I know what you are thinking. You are thinking, “Hey, man. You have a kid. A toddler. She probably just shat herself as she is wont to do, and the sitter just didn’t change the diaper.” But as any parent will tell you, we know what our kid’s shit smells like. We can pick it out in a crowd of toddlers.

It was really hard to reconcile how she looked with how she had clearly violated my plumbing. It was enough to make me suspect that she’d had her boyfriend over and he’d done the number on the pipes.

Guess what. No matter how hot your babysitter is, if you are convinced she has crapped a raccoon you will never be able to have inappropriate thoughts about her.

Damn. Because I’m pretty sure one of the perks of being a dad is the idle, harmless thoughts you’re allowed to have about the babysitter.

No? What are you, an America-hater? Do you want the terrorists to win?

We had a brief introductory conversation about school and the like, but it seemed like she really wanted to get the hell out of there. Wouldn’t you? If you had dropped a deuce in your employer’s can and he’d come home to some ungodly stew of a stench? Yeah, I’d want to leave too. Quickly. And so she did.

Goodbye, hot babysitter. I’m not sure I can hire you again, not because you’re hot, but because oh my god.

After she left I chased my still sniffling daughter around the living room for a while. And I noticed that the smell never dissipated. In fact, it grew stronger.

And sure enough, when I checked the contents of my daughter’s diaper I discovered that I had completely maligned my hot babysitter. Er, her hot babysitter.

Because my daughter was home sick. And part of her sickness was apparently holy Christ on a bicycle what is dying in your intestines? It completely changed the, well, the everything about her elimination, making it totally unrecognizable.

Is this post really about shit? Sick shit at that?

Nope.

This post is about how I have a totally hot babysitter.

Phew.

Although, now I might have to fire her for not changing that fucking diaper before I got home. Jesus. See? Never hire a smoker to babysit; they can’t smell a damned thing.

But, she is hot. How much hotness does it take to make up for anosmia?

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Shawn is a dad with a backpack that his kids ride in, yes. Fortunately, his posts are filled with stories and reflections that go far beyond the simplicity of his own self-description. If you haven’t been entertained by him regularly yet, you should make your way over to Backpacking Dad and hang out. He’s often quite brilliant.

Farterworks

Even though we took these photos over a month ago (dude, who keeps letting time move by SO FAST?) I thought I’d share them with you, because they kind of crack me up.

This was a Saturday morning Mac Photo Booth play session with Braden (hence the fabulous photo quality, *snort*). He is both silly and fun as well as intensely moody, whiny, and dramatic.

I really have no idea whose child this is. *wink*

smiling pretty for the camera

after being scolded for slapping the keyboard

making fun of him for whining

giving in to the giggles after the tears

I adore hanging out with him and being silly. He is displaying such a fabulous sense of humor these days, which makes it even more fun.

And by sense of humor, I mean that he is cracking me up by replicating my incorrigible taste for fart jokes, with indelible favorites like:

*the sound of fireworks outside*
Him: “Ooooooh, Farter!”
Me: “No, silly, you know those are fireworks!”
Him: Pause. *giggle* “Oooooooh, FARTER-WORKS!” *raucous laughter*
Me: *SMPL*

Gotta love havin’ a little boy. Especially when you are secretly one, too.

Lazy Douche Enablers: Sarah of Sarah and the Goon Squad

Lazy Douche Enablers write posts for me every other Tuesday. That way, I can be a much better… you guessed it: Lazy Douche. Today’s Enabler is Sarah, of Sarah and the Goon Squad.

That Sarah, She’s a Classy Gal

When Lotus asked me to guest post I immediately said yes.

And then I remembered that I am not a very good writer. And right after that I remembered that I had completely run out of things to write about on my own blog. And then I felt stupid.

Not that feeling like an idiot is a new emotion for me by any stretch of the imagination.

Oh! That gives me an idea. I could tell you my fart story. This seems like an appropriate venue for a good fart story. Wouldn’t you agree? Here goes nothing.

One time my husband and I were in Orlando for homecoming (I went to The University of Central Florida, and yes actually Daunte Culpepper was a Freshman when I was a Senior.) and we had been drinking like crazy all weekend and eating total garbage. It was after the football game and the plan was that we would all go to our rooms and get cleaned up for dinner. My stomach was a mess. I’d been drinking Miller Light in plastic bottles all day. You know what that can do to a person.

Our good friends Tammy and Ritch were staying two doors down the hall from us and we were going to just meet them in the hall and go down to the lobby to meet the rest of the gang. Gabe opened up the door to our hotel room and I said “Are they out there yet?” He said “No” and then I let out the loudest, raunchiest fart of all time. Then Gabe closed the door.

He said “No, Tammy and Ritch aren’t out there, but other people are. Apparently these “other people” all turned to look at him when the event occurred.

This is one of those things that when it happened I was so glad that it was only me and the person that already promised to spend the rest of his life with me that witnessed the event. (Well, and the others, I suppose but unless they are reading this right now they have no idea it was me.) Of course 40 seconds later when Tammy and Ritch actually came out of their room I immediately blabbed the entire story.

Then I told the internet.

I have no shame.

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If Sarah entertained you today, feel free to check her other stuff out at Sarah and the Goon Squad, Loser Moms, Draft Day Suit, BlogHer, MamaPop… she pretty much writes everywhere.