Hit by a Pitch

I’m still sick. The good news is that last night, I stopped coughing and was able to fall asleep around 3, which was a huge improvement over Sunday night, when I was up coughing until about 5:30 (my alarm went off at 6:10, at which point I said fuck it all, I’m not going to work). Cold medicine and my big old pile of pillows are powerless against this cough. But enough about that boring shit.

Soren has taken full responsibility for keeping himself entertained. This morning, he started reading How to Brew. I hope his first project is a nice, hoppy IPA.

Two-year-olds are really into learning to be independent. “I do it!” is a common theme around our house these days.

I finally realized that same sense of doingitness, if I can make up a word, also applies to things I tell Soren to do. He loves to do his own thing, but he loves to do my thing, too. This is completely awesome.

At the grocery store, more often than not these days, Soren doesn’t want to ride in the cart. Or he does, but then he doesn’t, and then he maybe does again, but then again no. To keep him from getting all grumpy and “Have it?!” (“Have it” is, hands down, his absolute favorite thing to say, ever, in any situation. He also likes putting nouns and the end of the sentence, which I think is really cute. Have it car? Eat it banana? I’ve also taught him to be sort of inadvertently European. I like to give him kisses on the cheek. I do this by saying, “Mommy kiss?” and then I kiss a cheek. Then because I don’t want to create a kiss imbalance, I say “Other kiss?” and he turns his head and gives me the other cheek to kiss. Now, he also makes kissing motions while this is happening and it’s just like we’re friends greeting each other in Paris. These random little things are, like, one of the best parts about being a parent. Kiss? Other kiss?) I give him projects. The produce department is great. Ben will have the cart and will be doing one thing, and Soren and I will be looking for, say, the red bell peppers, jalapenos, cilantro, and bananas that aren’t already too ripe. I’ll be all, “Where are the red peppers?” So we find the peppers. He can’t necessarily reach them and even if he could, I’m not sure I’m ready to rely on his produce-acquisition skills, so I get a pepper, put it in a bag, and hand it to him with the instruction to find daddy and put it in the cart. He is very good at putting it in the cart and we can usually accomplish this endeavor without being too annoying to other shoppers. One of my greatest fears as a parent, aside from my child growing up to be a serial killer, an Insane Clown Posse fan, or one of those assholes who’s always quoting Ayn Rand, is annoying people. Soren tends to be pretty outgoing and friendly when we’re out and about, so this helps. He’s always saying hi to people and one of his favorite things in life is chatting everybody up at the grocery store. People usually seem to enjoy this, so I figure it’s all good.

Today I realized it was time to take Soren’s doingitness to the next level. We went out to the front yard to pull some weeds. After some discussion of “good plants” versus “bad plants,” Soren got pretty comfortable yanking bindweed even when it was hidden among other plants. When we got to the point where I had to climb through the foliage to access remote weeds, he was in charge of taking them from me after I pulled them and putting them in the bucket. This was one of the most exciting things he’s ever done. “More?” he’d ask impatiently as I scraped my hands on the lavender and dug around for weeds that are still pretty little this early in the season but don’t let that fool you because they’ll be out of control soon.

Despite what you’ve heard about tantrums and that sort of thing (and it’s all true, of course), 2-year-olds aren’t so bad to have around.

Yesterday morning, Soren declared that he wanted to go “pee pee on the toilet.” So we got out our little “potty,” as they are called (we have this one, in, for some mysterious reason, white), put it in the bathroom, and let him have at it. Of course nothing happened.

Nonetheless, this is an exciting development — or, well, I’m trying to convince myself it’s an exciting development. I haven’t been looking forward to pee pee on the toilet. I mean, I’ve heard all the horror stories. It seems hard, frustrating, and gross. But hey, that’s what you sign up for when you have a kid, so it’s cool.

My philosophy on potty training goes something like the Wikipedia definition of laissez-faire:

In economics, laissez-faire is an environment in which transactions between private parties are free from state intervention, including regulations, taxes, tariffs, and enforced monopolies. The phrase laissez-faire is French and literally means “let do,” but it broadly implies “let it be,” or “leave it alone.”

(Note: I edited that quote to add the serial comma and to put the commas inside the quotation marks. This is America, where commas and periods go inside the quotation marks. Thank you.)

In potty training, laissez-faire is an environment in which pee pee and poopies (also known as “caca”) on the toilet are free from overt parental intervention, including prodding, pleading, bribery, chicanery, and emotional outbursts. I’m not in a hurry to make this happen and, I don’t know, I don’t want to make a big deal out of it. I figure Soren will, on his own, want to start using the toilet and, eventually will, with some help and gentle encouragement, be fully capable of doing so.

Just like we did baby-led weaning when it came to food, I figure we can do something like baby-led potty training. Hey, here’s a potty. Have at it, if you feel like it. If not, no big deal.

In addition to the potty, we got some cloth training pants so he can start learning how to pull them up and take them off (he can remove diapers but can’t put them on). For this, we went to the “butt store.” It was fun. And then this happened.
One of our favorite things to do is act out the “Do you like my hat” scenes from our favorite book, Go, Dog. Go! Do you like my hat? Most of the time, the answer is no. But not today. I like it! I like that party hat! (I also, for the record, like the Heisman squirrel t-shirt.)