THE BINKY CONSPIRACY
by Ilana Long
CF Kids at Crossroads in Bellevue
Check out:
http://www.twinparenthood.com
for my guest blog!
Check out:
http://www.twinparenthood.com
for my guest blog!
- Laugh along with Ilana Long's delightfully hilarious stories of the manic moments of motherhood. Long shares the unbelievable, true-life tales of raising her twins and illustrates them with whimsical cartoons. In "The Binky Conspiracy" Long digs under the car seat for a missing pacifier, and rescues a toddler from eating a urinal cake. Each story will make practiced parents smile knowingly at mothering memories, and new moms insist, "That will never be me." Just wait and see!
A great gift for any mom, new or experienced!
- Contact Ilana: ilanalong@hotmail.com
Check out what the media has to say about "The Binky Conspiracy"
READ AN EXCERPT BELOW:All in the Training
“C’mon, Hon. They’ll pick it up at their own pace. I promise they won’t go to their Microsoft interviews still sucking their thumbs and wearing diapers.”
“Look, let’s try it my way. If they’re not potty trained within the week,” he concedes, “we’ll reassess it."
For each child, I purchase three pairs of outrageously overpriced training underpants, imagining, in my naiveté, that these will last three days. We have waited until the heat of summer in their second year, so that we can let them run around naked on the back deck, and, hopefully, become aware of the fact that they are peeing. We fill up a little wading pool for them to play in, and explain the rules.
“Alright. No peeing in the pool. If you need to pee, go and sit on the potty,” I say, gesturing to the lovely addition to our outdoor patio furniture.
“Okay,” says Benji as he is peeing out a stream into the pool. “Oh, look. I peed!” He is thrilled with this visible action that he is now able to perform with his useful equipment.
Not to be outdone, Marina exclaims, “Ohp.” Bowing her legs, she opens her eyes wide with surprise, “I can pee, too!”
“Run to the potty. Run. Run!” I shout, knowing full well this is a futile effort. The damage is done. Simultaneously, they race to the potty chair and in a hilarious game of musical chair, they try to sit on top of each other.
“Me first,” says Benji, and seven seconds later, “Nope. I can’t pee.”
That afternoon, we go through all six pairs of underwear. I race to Target and buy 12 more pairs. They are ridiculously pricey. We have to get a second mortgage on the house.
That night, we put the kids to bed in underpants. I know. Well, now I know. You could have told me earlier that most toddlers sleep in diapers.
The next morning….success! Benji’s pee actually ends up in the potty (not around it, under it, or on Mommy’s shoe). We jump up and down shouting, “Yay, Benji! Benji peed in the potty,” like a family of deranged village idiots. We call the grandparents and repeat the process. They shout over the speakerphone, “Wow, that’s terrific!” as if he had just won the Nobel Peace Prize. And then Marina succeeds, too. And more ecstasy and stickers on charts and promises of lollipops for going number two.
We become potty-obsessed. We have set up two potties in each bathroom for Simultaneous Pee Fests. On Ebay, we order a folding, portable, plastic seat insert for public toilets. (It arrives well after the hooplah, and pinches, anyway.) We carry a potty in the trunk of the car, and haul it with us to parks and playgrounds where restrooms are scarce. We have late night debates on the dueling merits of the potty ring vs. the floor model. In the car, we put plastic bags on the carseats, and under the driver’s seat we stow rolls of paper towels (the quicker-soaker-upper) and spare (gender-generic) pants and underwear. In the first week, we launder constantly – not just pants and undies, but socks, shoes, and shirts. Resolve carpet cleaner is our new best friend. The pee is ubiquitous.
We ride the potty roller coaster. There are successes and accidents. At the Issaquah Salmon Days Festival, I change a miserable, wet child on the counter of the police station, and sheepishly ask if we can use the restroom. At Kelsey Creek Park, the kids turn their lips down when offered the services of the Honey Pot Porta-John. Finally, Benji concedes. Suddenly, he is holding something and saying, “Mom, what’s this?”
It is the urinal cake. I scream “Drop it! Drop it,” like it is a live grenade. (Well, maybe that’s not the exact metaphor…) He does and begins to cry. I feel like a creep. I realize, as I dig in my bag for some Purell, that I have probably just yanked the brakes on the potty train-ing.
Happily, the children have a new potty interest. They are fascinated by the size and shape of their poop in the potty. They have inherited this trait from their father, who has been known to exclaim, “Honey, come quick. You gotta see this!” Like images in a cloud, Benji and Marina see sculpted bunnies and bunches of grapes. One day, Marina shouted cheerfully, “Come quick!” We race into the bathroom. Pointing in the toilet she says, “See? A Mommy poop, a Daddy poop and two teeny, tiny babies.”
Benji is thrilled. “You pooped a whole family!” We flush, but the smaller pooplets don’t go down. “Oh, no! The Mommy and Daddy left without their babies!”
“Don’t worry,” Marina consoles. “They went to work. They’ll be back soon.” The remaining pellets are still swirling in the bowl. “See? They’re fine. They’re playing tag.”
Now, nearly a year later, our potty training travails are a mere glimmer. Like pregnancy and 2 a.m. feedings, our systems are trained to forget the pain-in-the-tush aspects of potty training, so that we will have the stupidity to go through it all over again for the sake of reproducing. So, when my friend Sylvia’s son was trudging through his first day of training, and his 16th pair of underwear, she asked me, “Was it this hard with your kids?” Thinking about the Porta-John, I smiled and said, “Piece of cake.”
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