Everybody does it…

Merritt has taken over the reins of the blog for this particular post.  As most of you have gathered, for some reason every one of Merritt’s posts eventually degenerate to an in-depth discussion of bodily functions of some sort.  Well… you have been warned… this post is no exception.

This broadcast is brought to you by the letter “P” and the number “2”.

Yes, my friends… accidents do in fact happen. That is what they say.

Several of these “accidents” have in fact happened in our beloved home during the past week.  Here is the evidence:

In the words of my favorite philosopher (aka Elmo’s dad), “It’s potty time, time to get down low.  It’s potty time, time to get with the flow.”  No truer words have ever been spoken.  For the past several months, we have been inundating our unsuspecting toddler with very subtle mind brain washing techniques.  Here are just a few:

The best line of the song is… “it’s where you sit to do what you’ve gotta doo–doo”. Ain’t that the truth, brother.

We literally watched this cinematic gem every day for weeks on end.  We don’t want to spoil it for you, because we think that everyone needs to experience this masterpiece first hand.  I will, however, let you all know that it does include the following Oscar-worthy lines:

“I really need to urinate.”

“Monkey pee, monkey doo.”

“I call it dookie.”

“We’ll let you know how it all comes out…in a manner of speaking.”

We started out this week as Super Parents, as evidenced by the shrine that we created for Maggie’s “private moments”.  Obviously, it would not have been humanly possible to create a more inviting atmosphere for our child to experience the joy of wee-wee and woo-woo (not our words… we borrowed those from Baby Bear).

We were even prepared with a bucket of encouragement full of chocolate (or as Maggie pronounces it “cotchit”… okay that sounds a little foul, doesn’t it).

We started out the first day like champions!!!  Just look at the joy on the face of our darling little potty princess.

Well… as it turns out… Elmo kind of sucks as a brainwashing technique.  By the end of the day, we had degenerated to this:

Notice the plastic “emergency cloths” placed strategically over then entire living room?  In case you were wondering… they all got used… repeatedly.

Also, in case you were wondering… we did in fact put our “not-so enthusiastic any more” potty princess in the middle of the living room to sit on the toilet while watching tv and drawing in her coloring books.  Didn’t I mention earlier that we are amazing parents?  On a side note, any guy that is seeing these pictures is secretly wishing that they had a similar setup in their own living room (man-sized that is).  Seriously, Lazy Boy could make billions off of this idea.

Five excruciating days and several buckets of pinesol and tears later (Mandee’s tears, my pinesol)… Mandee just slapped me and gently reminded me that she, in fact, cleaned the lion’s share of the messes… on a side note… who would have thought that such a small child could hold so much in her bladder?  Anyway, I digress… we think she finally has it!!  At least, she has it figured out as long as we ask her every 15 minutes if she has to go pee-pee.

Anyway, we will choose to call this a success.  So much so that we actually were brave enough tonight to take the kids out to the mall and to dinner.  We are awesome!!!

On one final note… I would like to leave you with the inspired words of Elmo… “Everybody does it.  They do it every day.  Each in their own special way… Someday, even you’ll do it.  You’ll use the potty, too.”  In Maggie’s case, it normally involves a face, like the one in the beautiful picture below, while she crinkles her nose and says, “Ewww… nashty.”

We are available for consulting if anyone is interested.