The Fleet men
Meyer hit 33 weeks gestation (even though he’s gestating in an incubator now) and according to BabyCenter, became a pineapple weighing in at 4 pounds. He’s starting to look more like a baby and less like some skinny, wrinkly old man alien. When I hold him, which is still restricted to about 30 minutes per day (yes,it’s making me insane), I actually feel like something’s in my arms now. Apparently, a pineapple.
And Asher decided it was milestone time for him as well. He decided it was time to pee standing up.
The child was slow to potty train in the first place — he was one of those kids that could care less about what anyone thought. All the mentions in the world about how his friends were all going potty had no impact on the kid. He still hates interrupting his play to go potty, and it gets him in trouble sometimes because he waits until the last second.
I’ll suddenly hear this urgent, “I need to go potty!” and I know there’s a 50-50 chance he’s gonna start to pee before his pants are all the way down.
We did, however, finally manage to convince Asher to jettison the pull-ups and use the potty, but he’s been just fine sitting down to pee until about 2 weeks ago.
That’s when I casually mentioned to him that his “best friend” at school, Josiah, stands to pee, like a big boy.
Me and my boys
Suddenly, Asher no longer wants to sit on the potty to pee. And it’s all because of me.
And with my 2 weeks experience in having a son who pees standing up, I’m left wondering…what the hell was I thinking?
When he was sitting to pee, the pee went were it was supposed to. Pretty much exclusively in the potty.
Now?
Pee goes everywhere.
Pee goes every freaking where.
It generally starts out either shooting high at the open lid of the toilet or low by shooting at Asher’s pants. And shoes. And the floor.
Then a sudden overcorrect will take it to whichever one of those areas at which it didn’t start.
Within a few seconds (you’d be shocked at how much pee can get in the wrong places in just a few seconds), a steady stream of pee will go right into the potty where it’s supposed to.
But my panicked yelling from seeing streaming pee hit various inappropriate parts of my bathroom then causes him to get the giggles which in turn causes him to wag his wee-wee around like a flashlight in the hands of someone in the Blair Witch Project.
And then the pee starts to go everywhere.
It’s on the wall, the baseboards, the base of the toilet, his step stool, his socks, his shoes, the cuff of his pants, the floor.
No one told me that having boy children means you’ll be scrubbing up someone else’s urine several times a day.
This woman’s work is not glamorous.
So much for my pre-kid vision of me as a mom: shopping and lunching while my kids sit quietly by my side looking adorable.
After 4 years of real life mothering, that fantasy is officially dripping with pee.
When Ash was learning I kept a small cup of cheerios on the back of the toilet,; when it was time to go we’d toss one in and he was instructed to “take that mother down” with his urine. It worked SO WELL and he loved to go pee. And he rarely peed anywhere other than the toilet. I’ve tried this same technique with his dad and, unfortunately, it doesn’t work nearly as well.
Top notch idea. It didn’t work with Gabe either, but I’ll give it a try with the 4-year-old. ; )
It is not only boy children that cause you to clean up pee all over the bathroom. Sometimes my daughter manages to get pee outside of the toilet. Of course, since she is a girl, she cries when this happens. My son, not so much.
Your pictures are beautiful. And I know it is driving you crazy to not be able to hold your baby as much as you want, but if he is anything like my girl, he will love to be held all the more when he is older. At almost 4, my girl is still making up for lost snuggles when she was a newborn and will let me hold her for extended periods of time. I hope you get the same thing.
Well, he definitely does the opposite of crying when he pees outside the potty. Not sure which one is worse. ; )
Aaaah, the fantasy….was just talking about the fantasy of life as mother of teenager and tween yesterday…not dripping with pee, but not what I imagined either. Not bad, but definitely different than I imagined. Your post made me laugh…I hope you are able to laugh in the midst of these times, as well (at least some time).
I just found your blog tonight through the My life and kids blog. As the mother of two sons, now 23 and 20, I can relate to this post. I hate to say this, but it’s still an issue, although it does get better. This reminds me of the time my older son was learning to pee standing up. Being a woman, I couldn’t handle the “pee drips” and since I grew up with 2 younger sisters and no brothers, I told my son to grab a small piece of toilet paper to wipe himself with after peeing. When my husband realized what I was doing he freaked out. No way can a boy “wipe” pee! Other boys will laugh and make fun of him, he said. He insisted that Brent learn to shake it off. Well, I decided that was a job for daddy to teach him. So, the next time Brent went potty, daddy followed him into the bathroom to teach him the macho man way to pee. I hear my husband telling our son to “shake it,” but apparently the instructions were a bit vague ’cause then my husband starts yelling, “Not yet! Wait! You need to wait until your done peeing!” Lesson learned….
What a fantastic, hilarious story! Thank you so much for sharing it here, and for coming by to commiserate with me about urine. I am also the oldest of a family of 3 girls who now has 2 boy children. It’s a whole different world learning about trucks and superheroes and pee on the baseboards and t-ball. I know I have so many more male-oriented lessons to learn as they grow. You need to be my advisor! Stick close please.