Tuesday, August 23, 2011

CLEAN UP ON AISLE 3 or WHY AM I NOT GETTING PAID FOR THIS???

So, two of the things I hate the most are cleaning up other people's pee and poop and raw chicken. Why insanity set in and I decided to tackle them both in the same day, I will never know.

Potty training and cleaning a raw chicken - two of my worst fears. My third worst fear is not the government or earthquakes or high fructose corn syrup or fluoride. Not even cancer. It's taking away my son's paci. More terrifying concept than starvation. Haven't tackled that one yet.

Anyway, this morning I woke up insane and decided to put my son in big boy underwear and rinse and de-skin a whole chicken in the sink for the slow cooker.

At first, potty training was going great. I took him to the potty every 15 minutes and finally he peed in the potty (he had also peed in the potty twice two days before)! Yay! He stayed dry for the first hour. Then, it all started to go downhill (and down his legs) very quickly.

First, he peed on his bedroom carpet. No big deal, I thought. I expected accidents. Nothing we have done with Max has been easy. I expected several bumps in the road. So, I continued to take him to the potty every 15 minutes.

But then, I had to put my 11 month old down for his nap and while I was gone, he peed on the bathroom sink (okay, I need to explain this one - we are remodeling our front bathroom, so the sink is lying on our living room floor behind the couch).

No big deal. Meanwhile, I am trying to clean my whole chicken. I have an intense fear of raw chicken. I think I might have died from salmonella poisoning in one of my past lives. I am really afraid of raw meat with no tangible reason for my fear.

I put on my gloves. I put the chicken in the sink and take it out of its packaging. So far, so good. I rinse. Then, I get freaked out. The sink starts filling up with pink water because the packaging is clogging the sink drain. I plow through my fear and take out the innards. I change my gloves.

The recipe says to de-skin the chicken. I get my knife and start to de-skin, even though part of my fear is that a piece of raw chicken juice will splatter and hit me in the mouth.

I keep working and eventually realize that I have no idea what the hell I am doing - I've never de-skinned anything before, so I just put my mutilated chicken in the slow cooker and add the spices. With a new pair of gloves, of course. (You all must think I'm insane for real now. My husband already does).

Meanwhile, my son pees on the living room rug, even though I had just taken him to the potty five minutes before.

Then, the big one.

I could tell my son had to go #2 because he always hides when he does it. I saw him hiding behind the curtain in the den, so I rushed him to the potty where he sat there for 20 minutes, looking at a book and doing no pooping. I told him that the poo-poos needed to go home and see their mommy and daddy, so he had to let them go. He understood. He really wanted them to see their mommy and daddy. He tried. And tried. And nothing.

After 20 minutes, I tell him that we will try again in 10 minutes. I could hear my other son yelling from his crib to be let out after his nap. And in the five minutes it took for me to change Harry's diaper and walk into the living room, Max had hidden behind a chair and pooped in his underwear. Sigh.

Now, I had a sink full of pink contaminated water and squished poop all over my son's legs to clean up. I won't go into the details here, but let's just say this particular changing of underwear wasn't a pleasant scene.

I was exhausted and thoroughly grossed out and out of clean underwear, so I put Max back in his diaper for lunch and naptime.

And now, I smell poop and stinky chicken everywhere I go - the smells are permanently burned into the hairs of my nostrils and I can't tell the difference between the two odors anymore. And frankly, at this point, I don't care if Max is wearing diapers at his sixth grade graduation.

Before his nap, I told Max what a great job he did practicing using the potty and that we would try again later after he woke up. That is what I said. But, what I really wanted to say was, "I don't understand! Are you trying to torture me? I know you know you are supposed to go on the potty! It's easy! Why won't you do it??? This is so GROSS! AAAAAAACCCCCKKKKKK!!!!"

But I didn't, of course. He was trying. I think. And he was awfully cute sitting on the toilet "reading" his There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly book. I had to restrain myself from taking a picture and showing it to everyone. Not sure he would appreciate that as a teenager.

I have read that kids with Sensory Processing Disorder, like Max, have a tougher time with potty training because they tend to have more trouble "sensing" that they need to go. This potty training stuff may be my greatest parenting challenge yet...

well, that and trying to determine whether I am smelling poop right now or just the chicken cooking in the crock pot. It's a toss up.

6 comments:

  1. Until recently, I too would pee on my bedroom carpet!

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  2. He'll get it figured out, pottywise, once he hates the feeling of poop on him.

    Every time I visit your site, I get this horrible warning from Google Chrome:

    whereawomanshakeshertablecloth.blogspot.com contains content from www.spearmintbaby.com, a site known to distribute malware. Your computer might catch a virus if you visit this site.
    Google has found malicious software may be installed onto your computer if you proceed. If you've visited this site in the past or you trust this site, it's possible that it has just recently been compromised by a hacker. You should not proceed, and perhaps try again tomorrow or go somewhere else.
    We have already notified www.spearmintbaby.com that we found malware on the site. For more about the problems found on www.spearmintbaby.com, visit the Google Safe Browsing diagnostic page.


    So while your nosehairs are smelling vile smells, my computer is being infected with malware...gotta run a scan.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I got the warning again, too. Sorry about the poop. You need a chicken lesson. We'll practice.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I know. It should be fine once Google clears the site. Apparently, a lot of popular blogs were infected with malware. Mine isn't, but they are on my reading list. I guess I need to go through and get rid of some blogs on my following list.

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  5. Believe it or not he will be out of diapers before he goes away to college! (Only kidding, it will be much sooner!) Potty training can be so darn frustrating, but the end result is so worth it. Hang in there!
    As for the paci, my boys never really wanted them, however my grandmother once told me to break hers she cut the end a tiny bit and just kept cutting it until it no longer had a nipple on it and that did the trick. Not sure if it works, but maybe you could give it a try? (When you are ready of course. :)

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  6. I sweat to God, we are the same person. I kid you not.

    I am TERRIFIED of raw meat. TERRIFIED. My husband has to do all the cooking because i will clean my hands like 45 times after touching something contaminated. And POOP, don't get me started. My poor son has to wash his hands 80 times after pooping and then i have to clean everything around the sink AND the toilet.

    It's EXHAUSTING being a germ o phob ( i have no idea how to spell that) and being a mother of a toddler. If I could wrap us all in plastic I would.

    I feel your pain, lady. I'm there on a daily basis.

    :)
    Michelle

    ReplyDelete

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