The Poop Completion Principle

At the door I paused. Is it safe? I thought. Will it be clear? Will it be fresh?

It was a one in three shot in this house, finding a clean one to visit. The good news is that we keep them clean with regularity, me being the latest scrubber and wiper-downer. 

I crept into the bathroom, not sensing anything unusual, no pungent smells assaulting my nostrils or watering my eyes. As I inched closer to the toilet, my confidence level increased that all would be well in the #BhivePower world.

Thank good--

Before I could finish my thought, I had made it to the eggshell white abyss and peered into its watery bowl. There it was in all its normal functional glory: poop.

Noooooooooo!!!

"Hey, who didn't flush the toilet?!?" I yelled.

No response. I knew the girls were in the living room playing. 

"Who didn't flush?" echoed the Mama.

Still nothing; the girls were playing pet adoption with their stuffed animals.

"Who didn't flush the toilet?!?"

"How big is the poop?" answered Beatrice finally.

"Does it matter?"

"Then it was Bryce."

Sigh. Of course is was the other. It's always one or the other. Much more Bryce these days than Bea, but still...

Months and months if not more of potty training to get them the tipping point of poop-wipe-flush-wash. But the flushing part? Not so much. Yes, we're still in a drought in California even with the El Niño storms, and the old adage "when it's yellow let it mellow, but when it's brown flush it down" has always been one we've practiced, drought or no drought.

The flushing is a struggle because of the noise outside of the home. Beatrice has always been noise sensitive and those industrial toilets in schools, businesses and other locales can frighten even those wearing ear plugs or ear muffs. They are really friggin' loud. Like blasting the waste into another universe via a porcelain wormhole.

Bryce is also sensitive to it, but she's just not as hip to the poop completion principle, not always wiping and usually never flushing. Washing hands are intermittent as well, but Beatrice is really good about that these days.

Wiping correctly takes a while and any parent who does the family laundry can attest to that. Mercy me, even in adulthood it's a struggle sometimes, but at least we've got most of the traditional peeing, pooping, wiping, flushing and washing hands in a sustainable cadence. With the only exceptions being if you're camping, having to use holes in the ground of bathrooms (Mama and I have seen a few of those in our travels), an astronaut (and those are very expensive holes), and unfortunately living in poverty and third-world squalor. 

Fortunately we're in good potty shape overall. It'll take practice and patience with Bryce, but eventually she'll get there. And at least I've got a fun activity waiting for me when I get there as well.

[Flush!]

Your favorite poop spot

Where's your favorite poop spot?

Yes, I just asked that question. So where is it?

For my youngest Bryce, it's sitting (and squatting) on her little bedroom chair in front of her little table with the farm house and animals. Or, it's on her little stool in front of her little kitchen set in the

What? She wears a diaper. C'mon.

Same with Beatrice, although we are in a fast-track transition with her finally going pee-pee on the potty! Next stop is poop train to the toilet! Until then the poop spot means quiet time in her bed.

What are you looking at? Get out!

Again I ask you -- where's your favorite poop spot?

Your main bathroom?

The guest bath?

The half bath?

The out house?

The guest house?

The back yard? (Keep that one to yourself.)

The hotel room bathroom when traveling for business alone?

The hotel lobby bathroom when traveling for business with colleagues?

The hotel room bathroom when traveling with family (and room spray)?

The corner stall of the bathroom at work?

The corner stall of the bathroom at work -- on another floor?

The corner stall of the bathroom at another office building down the street from where you work?

A quiet place to reflect, read, meditate and/or pray, to blot out an otherwise business-as-usual stress-filled day?

Mine is our master bedroom bathroom. Or, the male/female single shared bathrooms at work (one at a time, thank you). This may be too much info for the Mama, so I won't speak for her.

Hey, there's a Zen sense of animistic liberty when we poop -- having ownership over a specific bodily function in an otherwise cruel, chaotic world.

For at least as long as we can, baby. We can go out just as we came in, so let's pay homage to our favorite poop spot.

Ahhh. Nirvana…

Pee and pride of another kind

With guys it's easy: we can pee anywhere we want, appropriate or not, legal or not. And we're damn proud of that fact.

With women, not so much, although when the Mama proved to me how utilitarian she was soon after we were dating, my heart swelled with damn proud manly love.

She had me at hello, wearing a baseball cap and peeing in the woods. Mercy me I love that woman (and it is almost Valentine's Day).

But now we're dealing with pee and pride of another kind. The B-hive kind. The toddler potty training kind that boggles the adult mind.

I've written before about how Bea has a slight speech delay, and now her speech therapist's evaluation has confirmed it's more than likely auditory processing disorder (APD), which affects less than 5% of school-aged children.

What this means is that Beatrice has trouble processing the information she hears in the same way as other kids because her ears and brain don't play nice together. That in turn affects the way her brain recognizes and interprets sounds. Also, loud background noise or any sudden loud noise really bother her, and that further complicates and distorts the sounds in her head and the processing responsible for composing speech.

Although it hasn't slowed her academically (for a toddler), it has slowed some of her self-care progress, primarily potty training, but look out world -- Bea's on a pee roll.

For months now, getting the elder B to pee in the big T is what the Mama and me have been working on. Actually it's been more Mama than me, but I help with consistency when I can (I've been working on that previous rhyme, though).

We're focused on the child-centered method, which means, "I'll go on the potty when I damn well ready to." If you've ever experienced potty training, you know that forcing or pushing only leads to meltdowns and breakdowns -- and the kids suffer too. Seriously, forcing them to go when they don't "own it" is a bad scene and doesn't work. At all.

Back to Bea pee -- at first we started bribing with chocolate chips, a variation of the M&M payoff. But then our preschool discouraged the bribing and instead encouraged encouraging the positive behaviors of sitting on the potty, etc.

Which we did. And it kinda worked to get her to sit on the potty, to then still pee in her pull up.

Screw that. Back to bribery. One of her favorite toddler shows now is Super Why!, a show about learning to read (which she's close to doing actually). In this show are four primary characters, each of whom become a reading and problem-solving superhero in Storybook Land.

So the idea was to start putting stickers on the calendar each time Beatrice went pee on the potty, and when she got to 5 stickers, she'd get a Super Why superhero character.

As of last night, she's collected two of the four characters (we're gonna have to get more goods). And just the night before when she went pee she then stood proudly from the potty and said:

"I did it!"

Right on, baby. We are so damn proud of you!

One little victory at a time

"The measure of the moment
In a difference of degree
Just one little victory
A spirit breaking free."
--Neil Peart

Progress is incremental, made up of a series of failures to little victories, revisions and hourly referendums. But it's the daily white noise of everyday life that keeps the progress veiled until something pulls it back.

Like speech clarity, dexterity and peeing in the potty.

These little victories are highly visible connections on the toddler evolutionary lattice. Beatrice has had a slight speech delay and although we're still evaluating it, she seems to be a better visual learner, which in turn affects her dexterous learning. Her therapy and exercises to date have paid off however and she is catching up. Plus the preschool she attends is amazing -- she loves her friends and teachers and the interaction has been invaluable. Of course the Mama is the most patient teacher of all.


Hey, Bea can walk a balance beam, spoon yogurt into her mouth (and all over her face), sew yarn into a paper mitten and work an iPad better than most adults.

I have trouble putting on slip-on shoes. Jeez.

Just this morning she named all the animals on the animal show we watched together and what they were doing. Come to think of it, so did Bryce. Kind of.

"That's a duck swimming," said Bea.

"Dok!" cried Bryce.

Then without my knowledge, Bryce typed in a secret code on my Macbook:

,.;' ppp


Translation: Just one little victory, a spirit breaking free.


Right on, Baby. Except when you eat Play-Doh rather than play with it. Oh, and even though it's funny, Bryce also warned to be careful when teaching her older sister to say funky chicken.

(Queue the recent Modern Family episode.)

B-hives are faster than the speed of light

Scientists claim they're discovered particles that travel faster than the speed of light, potentially upending Einstein's theory of relativity.

They never studied the emotional cores of three-year-old preschooler and her one-year-old sister.

The rapid incremental changes our girls have gone through in their little lifespans is mind boggling.

One life-change "particular" in a vacuum doesn't attract much attention, but in combination with a gazillion more zooming B-trinos, it's pretty astounding.

Beatrice just turned three this week, and in the past two weeks alone of going to preschool her language has exploded and her ability to understand direction and structure is coming along nicely. Wish we could say that about her potty training, but at least potty time at school is helping. Hey, we embrace the child-centered method. Back off.

However, her emotional outbursts and meltdowns have erupted like the thorns of a beautiful buganvilla. Terrible 2's? How about the thorny 3's?

Yes, I just made that up. No need to shake your head and sigh.

So Mama and I have a hypothesis, that the B-hive is faster than the speed of light. We're early in our testing, but if our preliminary results have shown anything, they've shed the slower, more reflective light on our girls and girl power.

And speaking of the slower light, you'd think a three-year-old isn't capable of reflecting on her own young life to date, but then again, we wonder...

Happy Birthday Beatrice. It's only just begun.

Sharing the cathartic zero gravity of family love

That's why we have our very own space station in orbit upstairs.

Every night after dinner, when it's time to decouple from the reality of the earthbound realm, we take the imaginary shuttle up the staircase and bathe ourselves in the cathartic zero gravity of family love.

In other words, family play time. Beatrice chasing me and me chasing Bea while Mama plays with an excited Bryce eager to join the chase. Bea loves for me to hide and then pounce out from the shadows and scare the Be-Jesus out of her, which makes Mama giggle because she thinks it's crazy funny that Bea likes to be scared like that. It won't be like this forever I know, but then again, I'm not worried about forever right now, only right now.

I've just started a new career that I'm very excited about, but that will take me away from home on travel from time to time. Considering I've been home a lot more in the past six months, it'll certainly be a transition for us all.

Then there's global instability -- both manmade and natural -- that seems to be on the rise, which has put Mama in super-protection mode, elevating our emergency preparedness that includes buying way too much dried seaweed and capsules of unidentifiable green stuff. At least I've convinced her not to buy radiation suits or a Geiger counter since as of today the West coast is in pretty good shape.

Closer to home, we've got Beatrice in potty training school with teacher Mama (I'm helping, but Mama's still put the plan together). The good news is, Bea tinkled in her potty chair for the first time this week! Yes, I'm comfortable using the word tinkled. Pee-peed works as well.

The bad news? Bryce still ain't sleeping well, which means we're not sleeping well, which means I may have to hit the couch again soon, which means me playing Angry Birds and continuing my sea-faring adventure through Moby Dick at 2:00 a.m. while Mama takes over the bed in an Ambienic haze.

*sigh*

Good times.

I wouldn't change it for the world.

Although, I wish I could send some of our zero gravity to Japan, Libya and a gazillion other places and circumstances around the world and in our own backyard (in one hour per week).

Maybe I'll poke a hole in our space station and share some AM Gold.

Yeah, maybe that's what I'll do.

"Oh, ho, ho -- it's magic, you know. Never believe it's not so..."