The Potty Animal

Yesterday, we bought Mikey a potty. It’s arguably too soon. He’s 22 months old, and most authorities say boys aren’t ready for toilet training until they’re closer to 3, not close to 2. He also is wet every morning, and the rule is that until you can hold your bladder, you’re not ready for toilet training. What we’ve been doing is letting him come into the bathroom when we go, and his job is to flush the toilet and put down the lid afterwards if he wants.

So, why did we buy him a potty? We just wanted him to be comfortable with it, sitting on it, playing the drums on it, whatever he wanted to do. We’ve talked to some friends of ours whose 2-and-a-half year old daughter cries whenever she’s put on her potty, and we wanted to make sure that Mikey didn’t have that same reaction. Let him warm up to the object over time, we reasoned.

Tonight, we came back from a playdate and dinner, and Ian went to the bathroom and Mikey followed. A moment later, I saw that Mikey had his pants and diapers off and was sitting on the potty. Ian asked for me to get him a book to read while he sat, and I gave him “8 Silly Monkeys.” (“8 silly monkeys jumping on the bed / one fell off and bumped his head / Mama called the doctor and the doctor said / ‘No more monkeys jumping on the bed” et cetera).

A minute or two later, Mikey bolted up and we saw that he had pooped in his potty.

Not saying that he’s toilet trained, but pardon me while I brag about our 22-month-old and what he did 24 hours after getting his first potty.

Genius.

Mikey Meets Grandma and Grandpa

My cousin Sarah got married in Kenosha, Wisconsin last weekend, and Ian, Mikey, and I flew out from Los Angeles to be there. As you know from my previous blog entry , this is the second time Mikey’s been on a plane with us to go to a wedding, and we hoped his perfect behavior on the plane at and at the party wasn’t a fluke. I can’t say we’ll never have a bad flight with him, but now that we’ve been on 9 separate planes with him, it’s safe to say that the rule is that he flies very well. On the last flight today, one of the stewardesses came to us and asked if she could hold Mikey, and we said sure, provided he didn’t object (which of course he didn’t), and we talked about her own attempts to adopt while she rocked our son in her arms until he drifted off to sleep.

Just one of the moments of the last six days which will stick with us.

Mikey’s plane patience was tested at the start when we flew out at 6:30 pm from LAX, arriving at O’Hare just after midnight. By the time we met up with my parents, got our car (and then got another car with a bit more room for all our luggage), got lost in Chicago, and made it to the hotel in Kenosha, it was after 3 in the morning. He actually woke up the next morning, which meant he didn’t sleep his usual 11 hours, and that was the theme of the week: sleep deficiency. Even when we tried to put him down at some time approaching his normal nap time, he was too excited. This is a boy who knows how to have fun.

The wedding was very touching and my cousin looked beautiful. Mikey had already bonded with my parents by then, and fell asleep in his grandmother’s arms. When Ian and I whispered to her, “Do you mind holding him?” thinking his 30 lb. weight might be a bit much, she looked back at us and then smiled at him before whispering, “Your dads ask really dumb questions sometimes.”

He was awake, however, in time to break dance at the reception, after watching some of the older boys do it.

The next day, we flew with the parents to New Bern, North Carolina to stay with them for two days and introduce Mikey to his nonagenarian great grandparents who weren’t able to make it to the wedding. Perhaps not surprisingly, there’s no direct flight to New Bern, North Carolina from most locations, so we were supposed to change plans in Atlanta. Unfortunately, a massive storm hit the south-east, centered in Atlanta and the weather got so bad that the airport was shut down. Our modest layover became a desperate fight to get out of the water-logged city any way we could after our flight was cancelled. We were booked by the computer to fly out the next morning, but slightly more humane and human ticket agents got us in the long standby list for the last flight out that night. It began to look like only one or two of us was going to be able to get out, in the high drama as we entered our sixth hour in Concourse B.

Meanwhile, Mikey was having the best time, playing with other kids if they had strollers he could fasten up, high-fiving and fist-bumping whoever would return it, staring at people who were sleeping until they opened their eyes, and pointing out the “big trucks” and “planes” and “rain, rain, rain” outside the windows. He probably felt we left too soon when we all, to our relief, managed to get onto that last flight out.

The visit in New Bern continued the bonding between Mikey and his grandparents. He had his first ice cream with them, as well as his first seafood Newberg and broccoli soufflé. They put him up on their player grand piano so he could pound on the keys or watch them play themselves by magic. They hosted a party at their house on the Trent River, and thirty of their friends didn’t let explosive thunderstorms dissuade them from coming to meet Littlest Mikey.

And Mikey met his grandparents at their apartment at a retirement center. My grandfather is not doing well, but he is still quick-witted enough to tell me that he was rereading a book the other day and didn’t think much of the writing except for the introduction. The book he was modestly referring to was his own Stories For My Grandchildren , for which I wrote part of the introduction, and I promised him that I would be reading them to our son. An easy promise to keep.

As far as my grandmother, on meeting Mikey, she said, “We think he’s a gift from the Lord.” I can’t disagree.