For the record, March and April did happen. But they were a blur. Let's just continue on with our lives, okay?
Gavin is peeing standing up. And by that I mean he is peeing in the potty standing up. I'm sure he's peed standing up many times before while diaper clad (and a couple of times sans diaper but not in the potty. Once he was standing on our bed. Good times). I don't know why, but last week he declared that he wanted to pee standing up, like his friend Brenden (who, six weeks older than Gavin, has had this potty training thing down for a long time now). Then he did it. And then he did it again, and again, and several more times now. The second time he did it I put a square of toilet paper in the middle of the water for him to aim at, which he liked very much. He did that himself the third time. And the boy's aim is pretty good for the most part. I'm impressed. I have to admit, I knew the whole stand up to pee in the toilet thing would arrive eventually, and obviously Stacy and I can't demonstrate it, but it seemed at first that it is apparently an innate ability. The multitudes of jokes women tell about their husbands' bad aim had me a little concerned that maybe there was something more complicated then just hold your penis and aim your pee.
But I guess the holding your penis part takes some practice. Gavin had been a straight shooter until the other day when a combination of misdirected aim and a sliding step stool resulted in him falling into the toilet. I was not in the bathroom when this happened, I was out in the living room. Stacy was in there with him and I heard them talking in Spanish about going pee on the potty. And then I heard him peeing, which was quickly followed by Stacy saying, "Abajo, Gavin, abajo!" and then the sound of the step stool sliding across the floor, and then a splash, and then Gavin crying. I rushed in to see Gavin elbow deep in the toilet bowl. "It's okay," I told him. "You're all right. Let's get you dried off." I told him that this was something that happens to everybody and not to worry. He was still crying and very upset when I said, "Hey, you still get a jelly bean." Immediately his tears stopped and he said with actual perk, "A red one?" Jelly beans have been quite the potty training hit. Each time he pees on the potty he gets either a jelly bean or a chocolate chip, his choice. If he poops on the potty he gets two. But that has not happened yet. Every time I change his poop-filled diaper I ask him, "When are you going to poop on the potty?" His answers range from, "In one minute" to, "In 30 days." His concept of time isn't exactly, well, exact, but I would be perfectly happy with either time frame.
Thankfully Gavin's toilet bowl surfing accident didn't set him back in the potty training at all. He was back to peeing standing up later that day, sans step stool, which he didn't really need in the first place. He uses it when he sits on the potty to put his feet, but he's a tall guy (three feet and three inches according to his last doctor's appointment several weeks ago). Although seeing him standing there with his penis so close to the cold porcelain edge of the bowl makes me think of my mom's story about a little boy when accidentally slammed the lid on himself.
Oh, and speaking of penises. Gavin is incredibly interested in the concept of his penis as a hose. He is obsessed with fire trucks and firefighters and the other day when he was standing at the potty to pee he said, "My penis is like a hose." I concurred that it, indeed, did have hose-like qualities. He then said he could put out fires with it. He then stretched his penis out as far as he could and said, "I can put out a real far fire." And I thought, "Woah. The size issue has already begun."
Gavin has read many books about firefighters, and he's to the point where he looks for realism in his fire literature. No longer is he satisfied merely looking at photos of firetrucks or cartoon drawings of firefighters sliding down poles. No. A book must have fire in it, photographed or illustrated. Otherwise he very clearly expresses his disappointment. And now he wants to see fire in real life. Last month we took him to see ZooZoo in Detroit (it was okay. Not as good as the video on their website would lead you to believe. But Gavin liked it. Oh, and in case you were wondering, children have terrible theater etiquette). On the way home we were driving down Woodward and we passed a building that looked pretty recently gutted by fire and I made some comment to Stacy about how sad it was that there were so many burned down buildings in Detroit. I was not talking to Gavin, but he heard me loud and clear. "I want to see burned down buildings," he said. I told him I'm sure we'll pass another one and as we drove on he requested post-fire wreckage about every five seconds. We ended up taking a detour through a neighborhood where we came upon a house so ravaged by fire that you could see the sky through what used to be the upper floor windows and you could see into both the basement and the backyard through the bottom windows. Gavin's first words were, "Where is the fire?" followed almost immediately with, "I want to get out." We explained to him that, no, we would not let him stomp around the wreckage in his light-up Rayo McQueen shoes, and that the house was no longer on fire because the firefighters put it out but the fire ruined the house. As we pulled away he wanted to see another house. Lo and behold there was another one right down the street. We stopped and looked at that one and despite his pleas to see more we went home. I fear we've now got a budding Detroit ruin porn aficionado in our midst and it's all our fault. Sorry, Detroit.
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