Lightning Mc-ween

Remember how adorable young Halloween Finn was as a cheetah and a monkey? If not, let's reflect here and here.

This year apparently marks one of those unanticipated milestones: the first non-adorable Halloween. What's next? The first non-alcoholic Christmas?

Scary.

On an entirely related note, this was also the first year in which Finn could speak well enough to choose his own costume. We ran into some logistical issues right out of the gate, as he informed us that he wanted to be a "birthday." When I asked him to clarify what a birthday looks like, he told me it was a dump truck. Of course it is.

We ended up compromising on the Lightning McQueen outfit pictured above. Of course, that's what it looked like on the website. When it arrived in the mail, it had taken on a slightly different shape:


Behold, Lightning McCarWreck.

Of course, Finn won't care. He digs the fact that it doesn't cover his face - so it won't impede his beer drinking - and it will result in his acquiring large amounts of candy - half of which Daddy will confiscate in the interests of "safety."

Of course, if I'm going to steal all the candy, I'm going to need a costume too. I've decided that I'm going to go as Finn. It's a really easy costume, so I'd recommend it to anyone. All you need to do is pour a glass of water on your crotch and roll around on the ground for a half-hour screaming "I DON'T WANT TO GO TO THE POTTY!"*

It's sure to be the hit of any party.
______________

* To be fair to Lightning McPeePants, potty training continues to go well enough that I obviously haven't had enough material to post more than once every two weeks. I even taught Finn how to pee like a man, standing outside. But that story is only noteworthy if the neighbor happens to look out his window. Ah, to be back in the blog salad days of carpet-feces.

Pee-yola

Pop quiz: Which do you think is the most effective means of potty training?

A) Overbearing enforcement, coupled with lots of criticism.
B) Gentle encouragement, coupled with positive energy and lack of judgment.
C) Race cars, coupled with the promise of more race cars.

Did you guess A? That was my first guess too. Turns out we're wrong. Kitty's first guess was B, which - while certainly a better option than A - has suffered a ridiculous smackdown in the face of option C.

What was I saying about potty training being hard? I don't remember. Once we introduced bribery via race car, it's been smooth sailing. Way more effective than cookies and jelly beans, which either resulted in counterproductive diarrhea or an overwhelming desire to immediately urinate one's pants for the treat. Applied once every five successful trips to the potty, a little toy race car is extremely effective and much milder on our washing machine than the previously attempted bribes.

Race cars are also a little less, um, fey than baiting using episodes of Glee, which is something that Finn will literally crawl over his own father to watch.

However, while our results have improved significantly since we introduced the potty perks, it's not been an entirely smooth ride. There have been minor accidents, but no worse than a typical college student / retiree. At least we've reached a point where Finn will let us know when he's had an accident - which is more than I can say for those college students / retirees. All in all, we're very pleased with Captain Underpants' performance over the past week.

Unfortunately, I believe that our little Teamster is learning a little more than just how to use the toilet - and is applying his new found manipulation techniques to talk me into reading him a book on the potty in promise of a poop... a poop that never comes.

That's OK. Two can play at that game.

Are those sleigh-bells I hear?

Time crawls

Wow, is this thing still on? Turns out that having Finn's grandparents here last week really cut down on my blog audience and therefore my site traffic, and since I'm only in this blogging thing for the money... (Check my lifetime ad earnings below.)

Speaking of time sneaking away on me, I now recall fondly how quickly the first two and a half years of Finn's life sped by. Fondly, because things do not appear to flow that quickly when potty training. It feels like we've been doing this for years - which is also how I'm sure it feels to you too, since that's been the only topic of blogversation for the last few weeks. In fact, when I look back at pictures from our early days of potty training, I've got a mullet and am wearing MC Hammer parachute pants.

Though it is worth noting that I look good in a mullet and Hammer pants.

These are clearly the times that try a parent's patience. Just when it appears that we're making progress, and our little potty jockey is asking to go to the bathroom, five minutes later he'll insist that he doesn't have to go as he's dropping a deuce in his Lightning McQueens.

Add to that general frustration the fact that he's two - and therefore genetically unable to make anything easy - and even I'm considering that maybe I shouldn't be making so much fun of Kitty for practicing calming/meditation techniques.

For example, the picture above was taken this morning, several minutes after aforementioned deuce, immediately after he kicked the cat dish off the back porch and right before he hit me with his watering can because I hadn't yet showed him the picture (above) that I had just taken.

Breeeeeeathe.

Of course, being that his veins flow richly with the ridiculously cute and charming Parker blood, he offset all of that this evening by naming a piece of spaghetti "Brenda" and then pointing to his stomach when I asked him five minutes later where Brenda went.

That was pretty adorable. I think I'll give him one more chance. I just really look forward to the days when I don't have to clean poop off his ankles.

----------------------

For those that are interested, here are the total earnings from those incredibly compelling inline ads you can find on the blog:


Drinks are on me!

Captain Underpants Does the Puyallup

We're now two weeks into Operation Underpants and it's clear that we're not out of the woods yet. Casualties have been minimal, but consistent. We have yet to experience an accident-free day, though today was very close with only 1/2 an accident.

Don't ask.

We have determined that we can minimize homeside issues by forcing Captain Underpants to go commando. While he doesn't seem to care too much about peeing in his pants, he isn't thrilled about the prospect of peeing on his toys so he's more likely to head to the potty when prompted.

Commando works at home, but not so much at daycare or on excursions into the outside world. Daycare... whatever. Not my problem. Excursions? Definitely my problem.

Particularly when said excursion is our first trip to the Puyallup Fair! Allow me to preface this story by stating that many of my fondest summertime memories growing up were at the Dutchess County Fair in Rhinebeck, NY - which is also where my brother and Chelsea Clinton got married this summer.

Not to each other, thankfully. Nothing against Chelsea - I'm sure she is a very nice woman - however I would not look forward to explaining to my father-in-law that we would be spending the holidays with the Clintons.

The Puyallup Fair is bigger than the Dutchess County Fair by a magnitude of infinity (there's a sky tram and a Tesla/Queensryche double-bill!), and while I love me some summer fair, we've never before made the trip in the 15 years that we've lived here. But Finn needed a corn dog, fourteen separate hot tub dealers and a midsized tractor/backhoe (pictured above), and there's only one place you can find that.

Puyallup is about forty-five minutes south, but it might as well be Mars. Mullets, jean shorts & Harleys abound, as they do in certain areas of Seattle, however here it's not intended to be ironic. Weird.

Suffice it to say, we had an amazing time. Probably the best morning (that did not involve a Bloody Mary) that I can remember in ages. Finn was overload-stunned into catatonia for 85% of our time there, but we did catch a couple of rides and eat some fair food. And the only accident of the day was on the car ride down - from there on out, he used the surprisingly clean fair restrooms dependably.

But the absolute best part of the fair was the Mutton Bustin'. In fact, this may be the absolute best part of my year. We shot some video, but I found a compilation on YouTube that's even better.

Behold: Mutton Bustin'. I've watched this video at least 18,465 times since yesterday and it has yet to get old.

Finn better be ready for his six seconds next year. We need to get him bulked up on corn dogs, stat.

Splash

Since it's been a while since we've posted a talkie of Finn up here, I figured I'd share this demonstration of the proper method of wetting one's pants.

It's a shame I only caught the last jump, before Finn decided to try and ditch me altogether. The first 34 splashes were much bigger. Trust.

Two left feet

I don't know what kind of creative potty training is going on over there at daycare, but every day I've picked Finn up this week his shoes have been on the wrong feet.

Whatever it is, it seems to be working as Finn has only had a couple of minor accidents at home. I'll call them minor, as I will be overlooking the Curious Case of the Ankle Poop as it lacks any logical explanation.

Unfortunately, the story from daycare is not quite as bright. Until today, he was averaging about an accident a day - not bad - but today brought three. With a little digging, it was determined that this is likely the result of the jelly bean rewards being offered. Apparently, Finn hasn't quite gotten the fact that you're supposed to go in the potty to get the reward and was furiously trying to pee his pants as often as possible for a treat.

I shouldn't be too surprised, since our attempt at bribery over the weekend went sideways too. We bought Finn a cookie for being so good and we were trying to get him excited to use the potty so he could have the cookie by baiting him.

Us: "What's the name of the blue monster on Sesame Street?"
Him: "Um... Purple!"

[X]

After finally getting the correct answer...
Us: "What does Cookie Monster love to eat?"
Him: "Crackers!"

[X][X]

We gave him the cookie before he further embarrassed himself.

Parental potty training

I wouldn't recommend sitting on this rock

Final tally for the weekend:

Potty: 18

Underpants/floor/road: 4

Not bad. Particularly, when you consider that those four were all of the #1 variety. Of course, I'll bet none of you - me included - expected so much scoring. Anyone who took the "over" on the weekend definitely raked it in.

While the score is definitely very much in Finn's favor, I'm not sure whether that speaks more to his predilection for the potty or for our OCD placement of him upon it. In looking back at our toilet log - OK, that didn't come out right - it appears that we took Finn to the john roughly every 45 minutes on Saturday, each time initiated by us. With that kind of frequency, it's not surprising that he didn't have any accidents.

On Sunday, we chilled out a bit and the average stretched out to an hour and a half or so - and predictably that led to a couple more accidents. And I do mean accidents, insofar as I don't think Finn has any idea how his pants are getting wet. He'll need to figure that out, if we're ever going to be able to successfully toilet-bribe him with candy.

Whatever. It's Monday now. It's Jena's problem.

Hey Jena - Have this worked out by Friday, okay? Our washing machine is begging.