Bye Bye Wee Wee
My diapering days are long gone. But they were substantial. Four in diapers in the day, five at night. But there are some things I will never forget and my tween and teen children and others seem to enjoy Baby B’s potty training fiasco. So here it goes.
At the time I had four in diapers. The older twins were nearing potty training age and showed signs of readiness. I, however, was not ready to potty train toddler twins with infant twins in tow and an active 3-year-old. My mom, though, bless her heart, kept nudging me, “They’re ready. They’re ready. When are you going to train them? ” She was insistent. I caved.
My way of potty training is not my mother’s. I never did sit a baby on potty at certain times and wait until something comes out. No offense to my mom, and kudos to her –but she never had more than one kid in diapers. She and Daddy were smart or lucky enough to space their children accordingly. No, my method is to wait until the kid is really ready, then take the diaper off. Now you can’t go out much during those first few days. And there will be mess and laundry, but the kid will get to the potty eventually and get something in it. Just one of the twins was showing the readiness signs so I thought I’d train one at a time (I figured it would quiet Mom down some even just doing one kid).
Bye Bye Wee Wee! Someone had lent us this little cartoon video on potty training “Once Upon a Potty” where the little one walks around naked learning how to use the potty. Sometimes the wee wee and poo poo were on the floor, but when the kid got it in the potty it was like a Mardi Gras celebration. The child is depicted as so, so proud and makes a big deal out of waving goodbye to the wee wee and poo poo as it is flushed away. It was cute. And it went along with my potty training method.
Now this is where I must have lost my mind. For some reason we left the house. We hardly ever left the house, potty training or not. I mean two sets of twins, it’s not fun to go anywhere. That day my mother had come over to help me with the kids and for some ill-advised reason — we left the house. I must have blocked on the reason.
The singleton was at pre-school. We only had the girls. Maybe that’s why we left the house. Why, why? Often if I had to go somewhere and I’d get my mom and she’d sit in the car with the kids while I ran in the store, etc. But why did we go out that day, during the grandmom pressured potty training?
Whatever the reason, we were out. And, of course, the older twins got hungry. I was unprepared, ill-equipped for this inevitability. Did I say we didn’t go out much? Plus all my babies were breast-fed and I never got used to packing up bottles or snacks if we did go out. (Got Boobs? Okay, we can go.) So we stopped for fast food (again, not something I was accustomed to, so for the kids it was a rare treat).
Of course — the grabbing of the crouch and the simple word from Baby B,
“Potty?”
Damn. Now, of course, I know this is all a scam. Children at this age just like to see bathrooms in other places and will always ask to go to the potty when they are anywhere else but home. Still, any person around a potty training child knows that you’ve got T minus 3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . . to get to a toilet — that is if they really have to go, which you don’t know until you try. So, I had to take her. She didn’t have a diaper on, remember? So I had to take her to a public bathroom, a public bathroom at McDonald’s. And it wasn’t particularly clean (surprise). And this is a GIRL! I tried to check the seat for errant piss. I did the toilet paper on the seat thing in record time and then . . . . (tinkle, tinkle, tinkle) — would have been music to my mother’s ears but she was sitting out in the comfort of the restaurant area — not in the small sticky stinky dirty McDonald’s bathroom. I was just — well, pissed. (Pun intended.) I did the “Good Job!!” cheer and implored her not to touch anything. But I was pissed. Pissed that the primary motivation for my doing this was the softly consistent and disturbingly effective pressure from my mom — and all the moms that came before me (or so it seemed).
My baby girl (well, one of them) was proud and playing and dancing around the bathroom. She was still so toddler-ish. I washed her hands and while I was trying to keep her from sitting on the McDonald’s bathroom floor in front of the toilet, I washed mine. In my head I was making plans for bath time when we got home (for both of us).
Then, my little girl turned,
put her hands ON the toilet seat,
stuck her head INTO the toilet
and yelled “BYE BYE, WEE WEE!!!!”
I was horrified.
I was disgusted.
I was done.
Clearly in my mind, if the baby-child is not old enough not to put her head in a public toilet, then perhaps she is not ready for potty training. When we got home and washed up, I put a diaper back on my girl. I was flustered and annoyed at myself for not trusting my own instincts.
There have been times in life where I will freely admit that I should have listened to my Mom. This was not one of them.
At that moment, as far I was concerned, Baby B would wear a diaper until she took it off herself, drove to Victoria’s Secret and bought herself her own panties from money she made from her job as a Superior Court Judge.
Bye Bye, Wee Wee. Bye Bye, Poo Poo — Hello Diapers! 
In the end, it was only a few months until both girls were ready for potty training and they were trained quickly, without incident (but with. of course, the requisite accidents along the way). We were eventually able to leave the house.
Lesson learned? The time has to be right — for everybody.
Just Me With . . . NO kids in diapers.
Craigslist Angels — One Man’s Trash is Another Man’s Treasure
My house wasn’t this grand, but it was somewhat similar.
My Marital Home was large Victorian fixer-upper still in progress. I had accumulated a lot of children and stuff over my years there. One of my forms of therapy has always been to get rid of things and rearrange furniture (I know, a little weird) . Consequently I’d been cleaning crap out with a vengeance after my husband left (so much so he thought I was moving way before I even thought about it).
When the real move was on the horizon, I was faced with moving from this big house to my new little project where Piss Man and his GF were living (See Piss, Puke and Porn). So I basically decreased our belongings by — my guess — around two/thirds . . . Mind you the kid count was remaining the same and they were/are growing by the minute and although some days I’d like to sell them, I’m aware that generally this is frowned upon. Consequently, other stuff had to go.
Since I’m a purger by nature I drop by Goodwill often; they know me (even got hit on there). But since I was already doing this massive move by myself, including getting the Marital Home ready for sale and fixing up the new old hoarder’s house, I was quickly tiring of schlepping my stuff to Goodwill. I also tired of selling individual items, you know, meeting strangers at inconvenient times, etc. to maybe or maybe not make a sale. (Sounds a little like dating, but I digress.) I’ve never had luck having yard sales. So I started posting things for free.
We’ve all seen those ads, “Free Stuff” “Moving” etc. Well, I became one of those people. I decided to give away everything I could on one beautiful weekend. I took pictures, posted them on Craigslist and said FREE — come get it . . . first come, first served.
When living in a smaller space you don’t have the luxury to store certain things, one of them being holiday decorations. I’d already gotten rid of much of that stuff, but I was ready to let go of almost everything else. I told myself, and I was right, that I probably wouldn’t miss it and if I wanted more decorations later I’d start fresh.
My kids’ babysitter (now a good, good friend) had given them these beautiful angel decorations — you know the kind with the velvet gown and fur and whatnot — I had four of them for the girls and she’d given the boy a big nutcracker (heh heh). The angels had looked beautiful in my formal dining room when I had my Christmas sing-along parties. But, that life was . . . over. Still, even for me, it is a bit harder to get rid of items that were thoughtful gifts from a loved one– so I struggled a bit.
I knew I couldn’t store the angels and I knew that in the new old house I wouldn’t have a place to display them at Christmas . . . so . . . I took a picture of the kids’ pretty angels, posted it on Craigslist and put them out on the street, convincing myself that my friend would understand. It felt kinda like giving away my four girls, except my girls aren’t always angels . . . but I digress.
Christmas Angels
After posting, I got an email right away from a guy wanting to know if I still had them. I checked outside and they were still there. He asked me to hold them until he could get to my house.
Alrighty.
I mean, they were pretty, but I didn’t know they’d be hot property — in June. I moved them to a more secluded place and told him where he could find them. He came and got them right away. I never saw him.
“Cool,” I thought, “My stuff is going.” It’s amazing how you can’t sell something for a dollar but if you offer it for free — it’s gone.
A couple of hours later I got an email from the man who took the angels. He thanked me for the them, telling me that they were for his mother who was going through Cancer treatments and having a pretty rough time. She didn’t get out much, he said, hardly ever. But when she saw the picture of my Christmas angels she wanted them so badly that she rode with him to get them.
He said those angels made her so happy. He was thrilled to be able to make her smile.
He just wanted to let me know how much I’d done for the both of them.
I almost cried. I’m lying, I did cry.
Oh wait, it’s Just Me With . . . tears in my eyes . . . again.
For what happened when I prepared the Marital Home for sale, see My Panty Drawer/Your Panty Drawer
For my purging of marriage related material, see:
My Wedding Album, Time to Reduce It — Perhaps by Fire
Wedding Leftovers — What To Do With The Dress?
and for what I wish would happen with Craigslist, see, A Craigslist Fantasy.
Fertile Myrtle — I have a lot of kids
Yes, I had twins, twice — back to back, plus a singleton.
Yup. Yup. Yup. I can’t count how many times I’ve said this. It never gets old. Sometimes I have to say it to myself just so that I believe it.
The husband and I had been happily child-free by choice for years, but it was time to have some babies. Because of job issues, we wanted to have two in a row, God willing.
We had one, a boy. According to plan, by the time our son was 11 months old I was pregnant again. All was well until I had some spotting. I was terrified. Before my son I’d had a miscarriage and I was really afraid of having another. I didn’t want to relive that pain of being told they can’t find a heartbeat. I felt okay but because of the spotting my doctor sent me for an ultrasound immediately. I went alone. I was thrilled when they showed me the heartbeat!
And then . . . they showed me another heartbeat!
It was twins!
Twins? Twins. Two strong heartbeats. The spotting stopped and I had full-term fraternal baby girls. The boy was just 19 months old when the girls were born. I didn’t get my tubes tied on the table because it was a vaginal birth. My husband didn’t get snipped, which he would never do anyway. I wasn’t planning to have more children but I guess I wasn’t ready to make that an impossibility. I did know that after having gone through a twin pregnancy and childbirth I didn’t want to go through a separate procedure to get my tubes tied. So, I didn’t.
When the girls were about six months old and the boy was two there was trouble in paradise: my husband had an affair.
It was more of a fling that I found out about — immediately. He voluntarily ended it. It was a difficult time. I did not take it well, but I had three kids in diapers, two of which were nursing. It was an incredibly challenging time, parenting-wise, having a toddler and twin babies. Frankly, I needed my husband’s help.
Months passed, and we hadn’t really reconciled. We hadn’t really dealt with it, the demand of having three little ones took most of our focus. My husband was still sleeping in the guest room. I was still nursing the babies, but less often. They were getting some solid food.
Then one night, I was feeling amorous. Who am I kidding, I was so freaking horny out of my mind. Bow-Chicka-Bow-Wow. I should have known I was having some sort of major hormonal surge. I just had to have sex. Had to. I told my husband that it didn’t mean anything it was just about the sex. I simply required his services. (I’m so romantic.)
We’d both been tested by this time . . . so . . .
A few weeks later I was missing something — but I was still nursing, my body was not yet my own, let alone my cycle. Still, something was up. In addition to missing my period I had the signs. Frequent urination, I was even nauseous and starting to show — strong and early — just like with the twins. My best friend the gynecologist brought over a pregnancy test for me when my husband was out. I couldn’t face the possibility on my own and couldn’t deal with my semi-estranged husband.
Like so many women before me I engaged in the peeing on the stick ritual. It was positive. Right away, no faint line. It screamed PREGNANT! Of course.
I couldn’t tell my husband. We were barely talking. My pregnancy symptoms worsened, and they were heightened just like with my twin pregnancy. That’s the thing about pregnancy, it just keeps going, even if you don’t tell anybody.
Then we got a very strange phone call. My mother-in-law called and told us she had dreamed of fish — twice. Well, there is an old African-American wives tale: when you dream of fish, someone in the family is pregnant. She’d had this dream before, and it was accurate last time. Shortly after my mother-in-law dreamt of fish my sister-in-law announced she was (accidentally) pregnant. But this time, no one else in the family was reasonably likely to be pregnant so . . . she was checking on us. After all, she had dreamed of fish —- TWICE!!!!
Twice.
When I finally told my husband I was pregnant and described how I’d been feeling, he laughed and said, “I bet it’s twins.”
(What a prince.)
I retorted, “No, that doesn’t happen.”
I don’t necessarily believe any of those old superstitions, but my mother-in-law’s call, my husband’s teasing, my overwhelming pregnancy symptoms which were so similar to my last twin pregnancy, along with the scientific fact that pregnant women have no patience and suddenly become very superstitious — well I just had to know.
I begged my doctor for an ultrasound. There was no real medical reason for it, really. I wasn’t spotting or having pain and it was early on. Still, for peace of mind and to ease my anxiety I just needed to know that it was not twins. I needed to know. Plus, it was time to tell folks that I was pregnant — and I wanted to assure them that it was just one baby this time.
My doctor prescribed the test.
When I went to the ultrasound (again by myself) the technician asked me why I was having the scan. I told her “to rule out twins” — since I had just had twins. “Oh.” She made small talk and asked me how old my kids were (2,1, and 1). But once she started the scan she got very quiet. Small talk was over. Even though the pregnancy wasn’t planned, I didn’t want to lose the baby. I didn’t want to relive the heartbreak of not being able to find a heartbeat. Deja vu.
Again, I was terrified. The technician left the room without saying a word. This was unnerving. I was so scared, pregnant, emotional and laying on that table in the room alone, without a clue as to what was going on.
A few minutes later, the technician came back — with her boss.
I asked them, “Is there a heartbeat?”
“Oh yes, there’s a heartbeat,” said the boss lady.
Phew.
Then they showed me the screen. “Here,” she pointed, and . . . “here,” she pointed again. Deja Vu . There were two strong heartbeats — again.
After I dressed, with mind reeling or alternatively in complete denial, I called my semi-estranged husband from the exam room and left him a voicemail, “Yeah, it’s twins.”
Months later, I gave birth to full-term fraternal twin girls — again. This time I had to have a C-Section and at my request, they performed a tubal ligation while I was still on the table. No more babies, and that’s alright with me.
So there you have it. This is how I ended up with five children in about three and a half years.
Because of the circumstances of their conception, I sometimes refer to that second set of twins (behind their backs of course) as “Oops and Uh-oh.”
Oh yeah, and my first-born Singleton Boy? He started out as twins. My hormone levels had been high, I was measuring large, and was sent for an ultrasound after my doctor said, “You might have an army in there!” By the time I had the test done, it showed that his twin had been “absorbed” in utero early in the pregnancy. I didn’t think much about it — at the time. Sometimes I call the boy “Jeffery Dahmer” though, (you know, because he ate his twin and all). Ha! 
I had conceived twins three times in a row, like a boss.
Just Me With . . . almost twins, twins and twins.
I asked my doctor why this kept happening. She simply said, “I don’t know.”
See also: Five Kids, One Table, Rope, Six Chairs, and a Plan — How to deal with lots of little kids.
Just Me With . . . 