To Pee or Not to Pee

For all you mothers out there who dream of the day your baby will be potty-trained, I can tell you, it’s not that fantastic. Claire, who is almost three years old, is in her first phase of being potty-trained. “I didn’t know there were phases?” I hear you confused readers saying. Well, there are. Some of you might have children who seamlessly passed from diapers to underwear without any confusion or help necessitated by you, but not Claire.

I’m not sure how often she peed when she wore diapers, but now, she must go every 20 minutes. “Big deal,” you’re saying, “Why all the hysteria? She sits and pees. End of story.”

No. Not exactly. First, she announces it, “Pee pee, Mommy. Pee pee.”

Then I respond, “Okay, Claire. Go sit on the potty.”

Then she says, “Help, Mommy, help.” So, to avoid her going pee in her pants which would mean I have to change and clean her up, as well as the floor, I go with her to the potty.

Sometimes she goes by herself, like when we are at home. But, at the café (she is my café pal) or at the park, it is annoying to get up and go with her. At the café, it’s fairly simple. I just sit her on the big adult toilet and it’s rather quick. Of course it is annoying to constantly get up and pack our things so no one steals everything while we’re gone. The park, however, is agonizing. Why? I’ll tell you. There is no public rest room, which is fine because if there were one, I have no doubt it would be abominable and no one would even go in it.

The park routine is all-around unnerving. First I have to find a little corner which often means my eyes are no longer on big sis, Eva. Then, I have to remove Claire’s shoes, pants and everything and help her squat in a way so she won’t pee on her feet or mine. I kind of hold her mid-air and my arms and legs start to hurt. She just dangles there, poor thing, and wants to pee but for whatever reason, she cannot. She almost never goes at the park but she makes me do the whole pee routine at least three times in one hour.

Considering I can’t see Eva, I feel anxious and say during every pee pee attempt, “Hurry, Claire…Pee pee, psssss,” and I make a pee sound hoping it will illicit some subconscious desire to take a whiz. Why I do this, I don’t know. It hasn’t worked yet. So, that’s the pee pee deal.

Now, we also have the caca deal. At our house, we have a little potty on the floor and also a little seat we put on top of the normal toilet seat. She likes both options and seems to have no problems peeing on her little potty or the big one but when it comes to pooping it’s a different story. And to side track a little, yes, I’m still obsessed with poop considering it is omnipresent in my life. It’s seriously everywhere I turn, in my house, on the street, I can’t escape it. Anyway, moving right along with the caca routine, it’s actually a tad heart-breaking. First, Claire gets this painful look on her face and she starts holding her bottom and walking on her toes, “Poop…poop.”

So, I say, “Go! Go, Claire. Go sit on your potty!”

And of course she says, “Help, Mommy, help.” Then as I attempt to put her on her little potty, she says, “Big potty. Big Potty.” So, I put her on the big potty and she sits for a couple minutes and then says, “Done.” But, she hasn’t done a thing. I help her get her pants back on and try to do whatever I was doing before being interrupted and five minutes later, there’s Claire doing her dance and whining, “Poop, Mommy. Poop.” You get the gist. After many efforts on the big potty and Claire not pooping, it becomes not only aggravating but also a little stressful. For a mother, the only thing as important as keeping your kids fed is making sure they poop everyday, sad but true.

Fortunately, a couple hours later she’ll miraculously go to the little potty by herself and announce, “Pooped. I pooped.” This is great. But, it’s also not so great because she has dropped a big log. I have to empty it into the toilet and it never hits just the water (as French toilets aren’t filled to the rim like the big American crappers) so I’m obligated to scrub the toilet bowl and then take her little potty over to the bath tub and her potty has major poop stuck inside it so I have to clean this out and spray it with disinfectant and then rinse it out. I also have to do the whole clean-up routine when she pees.

So, to summarize all of this up, my days of simply changing her diapers are gone. And, I was able to do that quite speedily. Now, I consecrate unfathomable amounts of time to all her tries at peeing, pooping and my cleaning of the god damn children potty.

I’m not exaggerating; this goes on all day long. I’m considering calling up everyone I know and saying, “Look, cancel this, cancel that, forget dinner, I am on potty duty. I don’t have time to pick-up Eva or buy groceries or do anything.” In fact, sometimes I need to go to the bathroom and while I’m sitting on the big toilet, Claire prances in holding her ass and complaining that she needs to poop…now! And, she wants to sit on the big potty, now!

This morning while trying to get ready, I must have been interrupted five times. I almost forgot to put make-up on one of my eyes. Then, I imagined myself taking Eva to school with one big eye all done up and one little puffy eye explaining, “Oh, Claire had to pee this morning…fifteen times.”

On a daily basis, I find myself aimlessly turning in circles like an old senile dog thinking, “Now, what the hell was I doing before I got interrupted?” I can already see myself at 80 years old with Alzheimer’s mumbling to no one in particular, “Claire? Did you poop? Can someone go wipe her? Hurry!” Or worse yet, I’ll find myself dangling in the arms of my adult children in the corner of a park, hearing them say “Hurry, Mom… pee pee, psssss.”