Looky, Daddy!

Victoria's Festive Toilet

The twins are potty trained. Have been for a while, but I didn't want to tell you that. It was my plan to milk it for a long time, making the occasional cryptic comment like, "The girls graduated college today, their robes barely showing the bulge of their pull-ups," but then I wouldn't be able to post about Victoria's Festive Toilet. And that would be sad. I don't want anyone to be sad.

Victoria's Festive Toilet isn't the beginning of our story. It's the middle, wedged between a seizure and a trip to the emergency room. Be patient.

The day started at 6 AM.

"Sheeshur."

Kathryn's seizures have gotten longer. It takes her longer to recover. She often slurs her words.

Kathryn came in and sat in my bed, taking the spot where Sharon usually sleeps. Sharon wasn't there. She was in Florida for business, although it's still unclear to me exactly what business. The woman edits dictionaries, for crying out loud. Had there been some discovery, some outbreak of new English words she needed to investigate? My wife's world is a mystery to me. I looked at Kathryn. The left side of her face was slack, drooping lower than the right. This happens sometimes. The effect is not unlike those before and after shots advertising tacky plastic surgeons. It is not easy to look at.

Kathryn slurred more words. Only half of her mouth seemed to be speaking. I told her I didn't understand. She repeated the words with effort and it still sounded like nothing. I shook my head and apologized. I felt like the world's worst dad.

"Yong," she said, emphasizing the word with frustration.

"Long?" I tried. She nodded. "It was a long one?"

"Yesh."

She folded into my arms the way sleepy children do and I laid her down on the empty pillow. I lay next to her and listened to her breathe. We stayed there until the twins awoke. I know Kathryn never slept because she never moved.

And that was how the day began.

One thing Sharon did before she left for her "conference," besides pack a bathing suit and some sunscreen, was enroll the girls in a week of day camp. It was an extravagant gesture on her part--three kids mean three tuitions--but she said if I didn't let her do it, she wouldn't come back from her trip. "I don't want to be the one to discover your body," she explained. The camp was only in the mornings, just enough time for me to unload the dishwasher and load it back again, but on this day, it was even shorter than that. Mid-morning, the director of the camp called me. Victoria, caught up in the excitement of the day, the director informed me, had crapped her pants. Would I be so kind as to come there and change her, she wondered. I was tempted to say I was busy and suggest the director call my wife instead, but I was afraid Sharon wouldn't hear her cell phone ringing over the crashing waves and seagulls. So to day camp I went.

However, it wasn't Victoria that greeted me when I arrived at the building. It was Lila. A screaming Lila. Keep that in mind, because that will come up again later in the story.

Victoria had locked herself in a stall in the girl's bathroom. She had been in there since the director called me. "I think she's embarrassed," the director said. This woman should never be allowed to supervise children. Victoria could march through town leading the Fourth of July parade with a dump in her pants the size of Central America and be completely unconcerned. It wasn't that. It was the Festive Toilet.

When she heard my voice, Victoria unlocked the stall. "Look, Daddy! I took care of it," she exclaimed proudly, holding up hands that showed more brown than white. Her pants were around her ankles. Her panties were, too. She had been taking fistfuls of toilet paper, swiping them through her pants, throwing them into the toilet, then going back for more paper. At no point did she tear any of the paper off the roll, which left great loops of brown and white streamers dangling over the sides of the bowl. It looked decorated, like somebody was planning a potty-themed birthday party. Or welcoming home a beloved turd after a long absence.

To preserve her dignity, I won't tell you how much of her own poop she smeared upon herself during this process, except to say all of it.

Lila spent the majority of the time needed to clean her sister, the stall, the floor, and then myself, sitting outside the bathroom wailing in pain. Just before I had arrived, I was told, she had gotten her finger slammed in a door. A staff member had been holding ice on it for a while as I cleaned Victoria, but at some point that person had simply drifted away. And as I was using a wet paper towel to try to get the feces out of the treads of Victoria's sneakers, I realized Lila had drifted away as well.

I found her in a classroom, unattended and whimpering. Her finger, which had looked red and swollen when I came in, was now looking like a bratwurst. Cue the emergency room.

We didn't drive straight to the ER; we went past our pediatrician's office first. I had decided I was probably not in the best mental state to decide if this finger required the hell-on-earth that is an ER visit. The doctor looked at the finger for less than a minute. "Keep on driving," she said. "I'm pretty sure that's broken." So on we drove, Lila's middle finger swelling up in the exact same gesture I was mentally making at the world.

Lila was a champ at the ER. Why wouldn't she be? She was the star of the show. Victoria, however, became less and less enthusiastic about the hospital as she watched her twin talk to doctors, get a bracelet, and suck down painkillers. By the time Lila went for x-rays, Victoria was looking for a door to slam her own middle finger into. Finding none, she had to content herself with throwing herself to the floor, hoping for a head injury.

The finger turned out not to be broken, just badly sprained. Lila wore a splint on the finger for four days afterward. By the second day, the swelling had gone down, and the day the splint came off, she made a very tentative fist, slowly morphing her four-day bird-flip into a fight-the-power salute. And then she had to give back her gold medal.

Looking back on that day, now a week ago, it plays like one of those themed movies in which different directors shoot different, unconnected scenes all with the same cast. There was the sentimental childhood-illness tearjerker, the madcap scatological comedy, and then the fast-paced emergency-room TV drama. And, if you can believe it, it all took place before nap time.

But not long before nap time.

Jumpy, the Shark Fairy

Even the closed bathroom door could not dampen the exuberance of the voice inside.

"Daddy! Reading on the potty is awesome!"

Like this was an idea on which I'd been trying to sell her for weeks.

Kathryn and toilets have a complicated relationship. Kathryn will never, truly never, sit on a toilet without being told to. She will dance, jog, hop from foot to foot, and squeeze her crotch together with one hand so tightly you'd think her fingers would touch through where her girly bits ought to be before voluntarily sitting her butt down and peeing. But then, when she finally does give in, she will easily spend half an hour or more, sitting there on the john, her business long since finished, just swinging her legs to and fro as they slowly grow cold and numb, doing nothing but consorting with the butterflies in her head.

Until now. Now she reads. She reads fairy books, with titles such as, and I'm not making these up, Jasmine the Present Fairy, Lucy the Diamond Fairy, Polly the Party Fun Fairy, and my personal favorite, Georgia the Guinea Pig Fairy. Kathryn eats these books like candy. Candy for the toilet. Most days now, when I call her down for dinner, she emerges from our one working bathroom, flat on her belly, books gripped in her teeth, and propels herself to the stairs on her elbows because her legs fell asleep somewhere between Katie and Bella, the fairies for cats and bunnies, respectively. And in those moments I am truly the happiest dad in New Jersey.

As the daughter of a writer and an editor, Kathryn resisted reading with the same gusto that a daughter of a preacher resists her virginity. For years, she refused to read anything that didn't have three letters and was "cat," and the idea that she would voluntarily pick up a book to seemed about as remote as her voluntarily picking up a car. Or her dirty clothes. But in the course of one weekend, a weekend that culminated in visiting every library and bookstore in the area for more and more fairy books, (there are dozens of these books and they must--oh yes they must--be read in order, because god knows what chaos would be unleashed if you read the tale of Willow the Wednesday Fairy before Tara the Tuesday Fairy, and I'm still not making these up) Kathryn has finally crossed the border into literacy.

And her butt has the oval indention to prove it.

A Little Knowledge...

Kathryn's eyes were wide. It was early summer and Kathryn's eyes were wide with knowledge. We were sitting in a river in Texas, a slow, lazy river, cooling our heels when Kathryn, who was a few months short of three years old at the time, said she needed to go to the bathroom.

There were people around, just a few, so I got way up close to Kathryn and asked in a whisper which number she needed to make. "Pee-pee," she said back, and so I told her a secret. I told her that sometimes, only sometimes, when you are sitting in a river, a slow, lazy river, and the camp bathroom, the bug-infested bathroom, is very far away, and Daddy's beer, his cold, cold beer, is already opened, then it is okay for a young lady to stay in the river to make a pee-pee. And that's when Kathryn's eyes grew wide.

"Really?" she asked. I nodded and her eyes grew even wider.

Then she thought about it some more and asked, "In my bathing suit?" and I said yes and her eyes grew wider still.

She looked at my face hard with those eyes, looking for a sign I was pulling her leg, and when she saw none, her wide eyes finally squeezed shut as she steeled herself and pushed an enormous turd out of her behind and into her bathing suit.

Apparently two years old is too young to bite the apple from that particular tree of knowledge.

Still Not Pushing Forty

On my twenty-first birthday, exactly seventeen years ago, my college roommate and I drove his VW bus to the liquor store to buy me a keg of beer. The keg we bought, for reasons that I cannot now recall, already had a tap installed, and my job as we were driving home was to hold the keg upright in the back of the bus lest it tip and break off the tap.

Needless to say, on one corner, not far from our apartment, my grip on the keg failed. The keg tipped, rolled, and the tap broke off at the base. The whole mechanism was beyond repair and for the next few minutes all I could do was watch as my birthday keg emptied itself, spewing yellow, foamy liquid in every conceivable direction.

Today is my 38th birthday, and despite the fact that there is nothing particularly monumental about turning 38, I am still spending it watching yellow, foamy liquid spew in every conceivable direction.

Potty training is not going well.

Still, as I came downstairs this morning, I was greeted with such a crowd of young girls all waving handmade presents and scribbled cards, screaming like it was 1964 and I was the Beatles, that it's hard to carry too much of a grudge.

Hard, mind you, but not impossible. Nothing is impossible to a father of twins.

Dear The John

Dear Lila and Victoria,

I miss you.

Love,

The Potty

Have It Your Way

Dear Burger King®,

I am truly, truly sorry, but even in retrospect, I don't think I could have seen this one coming.  Yes, I did choose to dress my girls in sundresses, and yes I do realize that a pull-up and a sundress are no real protection from the kind of explosive diarrhea that erupted from Lila as she played in your restaurant's playscape this evening, but it was a beautiful day and the twins just look so cute in those dresses, and besides, I think you'll agree that, simply in terms of volume alone, even a head-to-toe snowsuit wouldn't have kept your employees from having to give that playscape a good disinfecting anyway. And yes, I'll admit that it might have taken me a few minutes to recognize that smell and go in to those playscape tubes and retrieve my child, and that if I had acted a bit faster, we might have made it out of your fine restaurant before the vomiting began, but even you have to admit that the smell of fry fat is fairly strong throughout your store, and while that is not a bad thing, it does not create an environment conducive to olfactory investigations. And yes, I'll admit that Lila had been cranky and a little run down all day, but really, isn't that what Burger Kings® are for? Parents of cranky children? Of course it is. So, Burger King®, please accept my deepest and most sincere apology and be reassured that we will not return to your establishment. Ever.

Or at least until that funky smell is gone. Because seriously, I don't know who is going to be able to eat there until that gets taken care of. Good lord.

Thank you,

The Dad

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.

With Chocolate Syrup and Sprinkles, No Less

It's 8:30 PM. One half hour past Kathryn's bed time. But she is not in bed. She's sitting on the couch with her mother, eating ice cream. Why? Because she is awesome. That's why.

She's awesome because today she said, "Daddy, when I get older and change my name..." She said it just like that, like it was something that everyone did when they got older, a rite of passage. "I'm going to be Gloria." She announced her new name with an amazing flourish of arms and even a little bow. "Gloria," she repeated, making it almost an eight-syllable word.

But wait, she's even awesomer than that.

When she got home from first grade today, she ran to each bed of the house and turned our pillowcases inside out. Then she went and put a single spoon under each pillow. "Dad," she told me, "you might feel a little lumpiness in your pillow tonight, but don't worry. It's to make it snow tomorrow. Also, you have to wear your pajamas backward tonight. Don't forget to tell Mom."

Can she get more awesome? Oh yes. Because tonight, with all three of my ladies in the bathtub, Lila let loose a poop for the history books. And Kathryn stood there, in the tub, wet and freezing, holding her little sisters, while we drained the tub. Did she cry? Nope. Did she complain? Nope. Did she yell, "Poopy party! Poopy party!" and then use her feet to kick some of the bigger chunks toward the drain. Yes. Yes, she did.

I told you she was awesome.

Update: After writing this, I was overcome with the need to run downstairs and ask Kathryn a question. Here's how it went:

"So, when you get older, you're going to change your name, right?"

"Yes. To Gloria." Another grand flourish, this time with an ice cream spoon in one hand, melted vanilla dripping onto the couch.

"Do you think all grown-ups change their name?"

"Well, not all."

"Did I change my name?"

"Maybe."

"What do you think my name was when I was little?"

Kathryn thought about this. She thought about it for the next five spoonfuls of ice cream.  Then she looked at me.

"Luther?"

Something Special

Well, if the ongoing haiku-a-thon has taught us anything, it is that parents are obsessed with poop. Really obsessed. I mean seriously, people. Poop, poop, and poop. That’s all that parenting is about, really. Which brings us to one of those questions that you never find in a parenting book, but you really need to know and answer before you ever even think about procreating.

Of course there are hundreds of questions that you and your spouse need to answer before you venture into the swampy morass of parenthood, but none are more important than the name question. No, I’m not talking about the name of your prospective child. You can name your child almost anything. Truly. You can name your wee one Princess Babylove, if you want. (And yes, it is important to state here that I do know a child named Princess Babylove. That is her name. Princess Babylove. I’m going to write it once more, because I know that each time I write it, it means that hundreds of readers will subsequently read it. Princess Babylove. Maybe if I write it again, LookyDaddy will shoot to the top of the list for any Google searches using the terms "Princess" and "Babylove." That would please me immensely. Princess Babylove.) Anyway, my point is that once you've said a name enough times, it's strangeness wears off. Any name, no matter how far-fetched or ridiculous it sounds, will, after you say it a few dozen times, seem perfectly normal.

"Hey, Kathryn. That was Princess Babylove’s mom on the phone. She invited you over for a playdate. Want to go?"

"A playdate with Princess Babylove! You bet!"

No, it is not your kids' names that should give you pause, it is the name of their poop.

For the first six years of your child’s life, there is nothing, no single substance, that you will speak of more than poop. It will pervade your discussions in the same way its odor pervades your house. You will talk about poop to your spouse, your friends, your baby, and sometimes, when your sanity is at more of an ebb than a flow, yourself. And thus, what you call it is of utmost importance.

You can choose to be edgy, cavalier, and cool by using grown-up names for your child’s excrement. This is, apparently, a popular tactic up here in the godless northeast, but I feel I would be doing my readers a disservice if I did not strongly warn against this. Remember, whatever you call it now is what your sweet darling will call it in five years. To their kindergarten teacher.

"Mrs. Doohickey? I need to take a dump."

You can go with the old American standby of "Number Two." This is a popular option, with many obvious benefits, but it does have the unfortunate side effect of reducing your kids to helpless giggles when they start to learn arithmetic. Plus I have learned from experience that most kids have absolutely no idea which number they need to make until they are actually making it, throwing the whole number system into chaos.

But whatever you do, don’t do what my friend’s parents did. My friend, whom I will call Andrew because that’s his name, had parents that went the cute route. They named it Something Special.

"Mommy, I need to go potty."

"Do you need to make Something Special?"

Andrew told me once that his parents' use of the Something Special moniker was so persistent and pervasive that, in his mind, those words will never refer to anything other than crap. Andrew is now in his forties and is still known to cringe when a waiter says, "Today we have Something Special on the menu."

The unknowing cruelty of these well-meaning parents becomes apparent very easily:

"Are you planning to do Something Special for your birthday?"

"Ho ho ho. Do you want Something Special for Christmas this year, little boy?"

"I made you Something Special for dinner."

"Why don’t we go back to my place? I’ve got Something Special in mind for you, big boy."

Andrew told me that he still feels uncomfortable flying a certain domestic air-carrier due to their mid-1980’s ad campaign, "We’re American Airlines. Something Special in the air."

I've been so tickled by Andrew's oft-repeated stories of poop-related horror and wonder that I am sorely tempted to make t-shirts for people in the know (that means you, Gentle Reader) like this:

   

You know, as I am reading over this before I post it, something I never do often enough, I am a little concerned that Andrew might not be too thrilled about me posting about him in this way. So, if you don't mind, Gentle Reader, can you go back and pretend that I've been using a pseudonym for him? Something manly, like Roger.

Or Princess Babylove.

Flashdancer

I was a freshman in high school when the movie Flashdance came out. It was one of those movies that leaves a lasting impression on a young man, and while I cannot recall the plot (if it had one) or any of the names of the characters, I do vividly remember a few scenes. Like the one with the sweatshirt and the bra.

If you are male and in your late 30s or early 40s, you don't need me to help you recall the scene. For the rest of you, the whole scene can be summed up by this: Jennifer Beals, in the middle of a conversation, reaches into her baggy, over-sized, gray sweatshirt, and methodically removes her bra, eventually pulling it out one sleeve while leaving her sweatshirt on the whole time.

Now that I am older, I know that this was no real great feat, but at the time, I wouldn't have been more surprised if she had pulled a live pink and green chihuahua through that sleeve. "You can do that?" my tiny puberty-fuddled brain asked.

It is over 20 years later and I must say, the female of the species can still befuddle my brain. Take Friday afternoon, for instance. Naptime for the twins had just ended. I know this because I hear Lila yell, "Fluffy! Fluffy!" Don't ask me why she calls Victoria Fluffy, but considering she uses one of the foulest words in the English language when she means to say sock, I think Victoria's getting off easy. Anyway, Fluffy soon awakens as well, and the after-nap giggling begins.

Naps can end in one of three ways: talking, tears, or giggling. Talking is a good sign. Tears are a little harder, but it is really the giggling that freezes the blood. Giggling means something is up. And that is never a good thing.

But silly me, I tarry. I go downstairs to the kitchen, pour some fresh milk into two clean sippy cups, get out two bowls of Cheerios for snack, and perhaps even check my email one last time before I go into the nursery, fool that I am.

When I finally enter the babies' room, I immediately see the reason for the mirth. Victoria is waving a diaper over her head. Her diaper. The one that should be providing a much needed buffer between her private parts and the rest of the world. And here's the Flashdance moment, she is still fully clothed. She is still wearing everything she was wearing when she went to bed: her shirt, jeans, and even her socks. Somehow she had reached inside her clothes and removed her most important item of clothing, leaving the rest intact. And amazingly still dry.

As my child waves her diaper over her head like Team Toddler had just won the World Cup, I stand there in wonder. Then I start thinking what a great Looky Daddy post this will make. Then, still standing there, I even start composing the post in my head, trying to remember the name of the lead actress in Flashdance, and whether or not YouTube will have any videos of her doing the whole sweatshirt/bra thing. Then, as though she is wondering about this too, Victoria stops waving the diaper, gently cocks her head to one side, looks at me a little funny, and pees all through her clothing.

It's not quite the same as Flashdance, but what a feeling!