The Potty Chronicles, Part 3

What a difference a month makes!

About two weeks ago I started letting Mihret wear "big girl underwear" when we were home. She was excited about it but it was actually a little bit sneaky of me because she was still doing her level best not to "leak" in the potty. I figured, though, that she would also not want to leak in her big girl underwear and was hoping that leaking in the potty would be a preferable alternative to her. Sure enough, it was.

At first she would sit on the potty for 45 minutes without complaint. And also without going... I would read books to her and every so often she would say,"Hold me, Mama! I'm leaking! I'm leaking!" but no, she wasn't. Finally she would actually "go," but not without much drama: "Ahhh....I'm leaking!!!!" And then a smile and, "I get some candy! How 'bout 5 candies this time?"

After a couple days of that she got over her fear and for the last week or so, she's stayed pretty much dry all day! Hooray!!! She's great at telling us when she needs to go and since she practiced "holding it" for so long, we usually have time to get to a bathroom.

Now if I can just remember to ask Mihret if she needs to go to the bathroom BEFORE we get in the car...

More Potty Humor

Slate magazine sums up many of my thoughts:

What ever happened to the plain white diaper?

Excerpt-

Diapers are for catching urine and feces. They represent neither entertainment nor education. I buy the Pampers brand because once, when the child was a different size and shape than he is now, the Huggies leaked a little. I'm sure Huggies are about as good, but it is too much bother to think about switching. The Huggies, at any rate, would have Walt Disney's version of Pooh on them. Butt Pooh. That's how much thought goes into these signifiers and their deployment.

That consumerism stalks the youngest among us is not news. When I was a child, my brother and I partook in the craze for Bert and Ernie's "Rubber Duckie" record, and we enjoyed it. We would go on to own every available alien action figure from the Star Wars cantina scene. It is irritating nowadays that half the toy cars for sale are Pixar Cars-brand character cars, and it is even more irritating that the toy-train industry has been almost entirely transformed into the Thomas the Tank Engine industry. But at least these things are being marketed directly, for their own sake.

Butt Elmo, by contrast, represents a world in which it's not merely branding that's out of control but cross-branding. Every space is a promotional opportunity for something else. My son may have a non-Thomas-brand wooden train, but he brushes his teeth with Orajel Thomas and Friends training toothpaste, because that was what the grocery store had. I don't care that my son loves M&M's and asks for them by brand name. But why does the M&M's bag have to advertise Michael Bay's latest Transformers movie—a promotion for a movie derived from a brand of toys? Why, when he wears his licensed Nick Markakis Baltimore Orioles T-shirt, does the upper chest have to display a big black logo of Majestic Athletic, a parasite brand that has crawled its way onto professional baseball uniforms and merchandise?

Yeah. I think about these things.