Like the Bellagio, Without the Gawking Tourists

God mocks me. It is time to potty train the twins, and God mocks me.

My wife, God bless her, took Friday off of work to help. Somewhere she got the idea that potty training can be done in one long, 3-day weekend. We've had discussions about this.

"It took way longer than that with Kathryn, you know."

"No it didn't, remember? You read something online about potty training your child in 24 hours, and that's what we did. Kathryn was potty trained in a day."

It is when The Mom speaks like this that I realize why she was in favor of having more kids.

Back when I used to read, I read a British study about pregnant women and brain mass. (It shocks me now that I used to read so frivolously. Ooh, a British medical study! Maybe it will both entertain and inform me. I think I'll read it. Now if I were confronted with even a small paragraph, just a few sentences, really, with the giant, bold title READ THIS OR DIE WITHIN FIVE MINUTES, I probably wouldn't be able to finish it all in one go. Granted, given my current status, that might not be entirely unintentional.) The study showed compelling evidence that women lose brain mass during the third trimester of their pregnancy. Their brain actually shrinks. The study added that further research was necessary to determine if the missing mass is ever restored. But, come on, we all know the answer to that question, don't we?

So anyway, on Friday, my thrice-brain-shrunk wife and I undertook the monumental task of potty training twins.

At first it went well, but then The Mom and I began hallucinating. With our nose. "I smell poop. Do you smell poop?" But there was no poop. "Just a toot!" the babies would squeal then head to the nearest corner, arms flailing all the way. "Just a toot!"

But it wasn't toots either. What it was, in fact, was the slowly rising level of sewage in our basement.

God mocks me.

When I lived in Texas, the most liquid I had ever seen on a floor was when someone spilled a water glass. Not so anymore. I'm not sure whose idea it was, but this Northeastern habit of digging a giant bucket beneath a house, then filling it with pipes--pipes older than me, pipes hammered out by a smithy, pipes forged while the Romans were still completing their vast system of aqueducts, pipes containing sewage and needing to be under the ground--and calling that bucket a "basement" is easily the worst idea I've ever encountered. Or lived above.

The level of sewage in our basement was only a modest eighth of an inch deep when we finally discovered the source of the smell, but it was growing very fast. There was a fountain, an incredible fountain of muck, spraying about a foot into the air, in a beautiful, brown arc, from the side of our main sewer pipe. My wife found it first.

"Bucket!" I think she tried to yell, but it came out sounding more like, "EEEEEWWWWWBBBBBBLLLLLUUUUURRRRRGGGGGHHHHH!"

Bucket after bucket we filled and dumped into our basement sink. We scrambled around, shutting off toilets, turning off the dishwasher, and yet the spume of dirty water continued, sometimes slowing to a trickle, sometimes a raging geyser. And, in all honesty, while the geyser was far more disgusting than the trickle, at least it was easier to catch with a bucket.

When it slowed, we'd take the full bucket away, and pour it down the sink, then run back to catch the inevitable resurgent jet of sewage. This cycle of slowing trickle, emptying the bucket, then raging geyser went on for an incredibly long time, at least two iterations of the Baby Mozart DVD that was currently pacifying the twins upstairs, before The Mom, even in her brain-shrunken state, realized that the sewage we were catching was most likely the very same sewage we were emptying out into the utility sink.

I'm unaware if there's ever been a study of brain-mass loss in husbands of pregnant women. I'm not sure there needs to be.

So once we started dumping our buckets outside, the fountain slowed down and eventually stopped altogether. After that,plumbers were called, pipes were snaked, clogs were removed, and sewage was mopped.

Babies, however, were not potty trained. We've had enough raw sewage for one weekend.

Comments

[hellybelly]

No offence to The Mom but with my 2 year old twins I really feel that I lost double the amount of brain mass.

To potty training them - I decided to wait. Then I bought the book "Potty training in one week", which I then put to the bottom of my pile of books to read in bed. So you'll know when I'm likely to start reading that :)

Since I'm going back to work in Feb and the children will be going to day care in the mornings and dh will be there in the afternoon it's a really tough decision to make. Train them before I start, or let the others enjoy the fun :) Unfortunately the book is in English and dh is German. Hence the lack of brain mass !

I wonder what The Dad would decide ?

[Helen]

See, that's what I mean - I can barely even remember potty training (I don't remember potty training my third at all, and he's only nine!). My daughter (now 13) did it herself, as her personality would dictate, but I do remember that my oldest took a lot longer to learn the pooping part than the peeing (yuck!!!)Of course my sister-in-law, who always knew the best way to do everything, loaned me the 24-hour potty training book, which had worked so brilliantly with her six-months-older daughter. I wouldn't take any more time off work, The Mom - it will happen...

[K]

I'm not sure which is worse- the continued need for diapers or the raw sewage....

It is good to know that disaster strikes other families. It usually feels like we are the only ones being mocked. So, thanks for sharing your pain.

Our twins are 2 1/2 and not potty trained. Let me know when you start your training course and I'll send the boys out promptly. My husband is willing and ready to pay ANYONE to complete the task.

[Jennifer]

eeewwwwww!

Brain shrinkage? I always thought after you had children your memory went to your mammary's. Of course that begs the question, after breastfeeding where do the mammary's go?

Sorry about the poop issues (all of them).

[EOMama]

My theory is that most of your brain cells leave your body with the baby(ies); the rest leave with the breast milk. At least, I think that's what happened to me.

[DadEO]

Here's a funny segment on the perils of Potty Training from DadLabs.com:
PottyTraining
Enjoy!