Admit it, we all have a favorite time, place, position, and/or style when it comes to pooping. If poop talk makes you squeamish, 1 – you must not have kids or they are so grown you don’t have to clean up after them anymore, and 2 – it’s completely natural and we all do it!
Yes it stinks, and yes, cleaning it is NEVER fun, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be fun-ny! True?
Going Mom and I have yet to start potty training Avery (we should really get on that!), but we are picking up on her very non-subtle pooping queues. Red face, grunting, brief moment of silence after making a lot of noise, and sitting at your feet are all very strong indicators.
Yes, I did.
For Christmas, Kelley and I decided to limit the toys we got her since she has plenty and we knew family would most likely take care of that, which they did! So, we bought her a mini-armchair with her name embroidered in pink.
She took to it immediately and let us know with her giant grin!
And I’m not 100% sure, but I think that very same day is when she decided her new chair would be a perfect home base when the time came for a good poo. I’m even convinced we captured her as this thought went across her mind..
Yep, this will be the perfect chair for pooping in my diaper.
Fast forward to present day, and she’s been going to her chair almost every day to do the deed.
Busy!!
It gets quiet, sometimes I hear a stressful grunt while in the kitchen, and next thing I know…
Done. Clean me!
Sometimes she doesn’t quite make it to the chair, but she gets close. I think this embarrasses her though…
I tried to make it, but it wouldn’t stop!
And so, this is our first big indicator for when we do start potty training. If she goes to the chair and she gets quiet, it’ll be time to bring her to the pot!
Does your kid have a favorite spot to go poop in the house?
Any other visual/audio cues that they are “making mess” in their diaper……or worse……undies?
Please share all the gruesome details in the comments. Hold nothing back, it takes a lot to gross me out! 🙂
Does your kid pretend to be a certain pet/animal or do they convey a pet-like quality by choice or unintentionally? When raising our children, most of us go through the common pet commands like “No”, “Sit”, “Stay”, and “Don’t eat that!”, which means we are at least partly at fault for this use of imagination.
Is it wrong? I don’t think so. When I was a kid I used to steal and eat our dogs’ Milk Bones, after waving it in their face, of course. In retrospect, I’m lucky I still have a face since we had a doberman. And I loved when my mom would set out a bowl of water for me to lap up just like a real boy puppy! C’mon, I know there are others out there who did the same if not worse.
When Avery was only a few months old, Going Mom and I decided she sounded like a Pterodactyl when she hunched forward. It was cute, and for whatever reason, a Pterodactyl was the first thing that came to mind. If dinosaurs were still around, I’m positive they’d be suitable as pets, right? Just imagine, that’d be a ginormous bird cage! Maybe they would replace parrots on a pirate’s shoulder…..
Food for my ptero-babies!
Or maybe not.
Sorry, I was drifting off trying to imagine a pterodactyl perched on a pirate as he sailed overseas. Cool visual, huh? Just me? Damn.
Anywho, Avery no longer expresses pterodactyl-like qualities but acts more like a kitty nowadays. As I mentioned before, us parents are at least a little at fault, and this is where I’ll take most of the blame.
Avery has been making squeaky sounds every time she sees our fat black cat, Lou (we call him Fatty), and she’s become quite intrigued by the fat feline.
Hi, I’m Fa…I mean Lou
One day, after spitting out a spinach omelette I cooked for her, I asked her to be a good kitty and eat her “kitty food”. Lo and behold, she perked up, made a squeak (how a kitty sounds, apparently), and gladly ate the green-egged concoction I created. Score!
Since then I’ve been using the kitty trick (is it really a trick?) to get her to eat the more savory items I make.
Being a good kitty.
She normally enjoys the food I cook, but some of the initial bites take some kitty work, so pretending our daughter is a kitty has proved quite helpful and cute as well!
Of course I had to share it with the world on Instagram….
I may have posted several takes, but it’s hard to resist!
I’m not sure how long Avery will let us use her being a kitty as a way to eat her food, but it’s nice not picking up so much food from the floor, and we’ll use it as long as possible.
I asked the Dad Bloggers group I’m a member of on Facebook and all of the responses had dads saying their kids act as some sort of pet/animal, or did at one time. One dad said all of his kids pretend to be some sort of animal, but his 4 year old has now moved on to her favorite band members. Hey, whatever works, right?
Other dads said their kids pretend to be anything ranging from a frilled lizard, a giant tortoise (love it!), and of course a dog, which the dad said he hates since they play the biting roll all too real. Ouch!
One of the dads even wrote on his blog, Daughter of the Beard, titled “The Hunger Games” about how they play a game pretending various animals are trying to steal his daughter’s food. Here’s part of his post explaining the game he plays with his daughter to get her to eat better:
BUT! We have a game. We have a game that works almost every time. All we have to do… is encourage her to steal and lie! You read that right, and I’m not sure how I feel about it either.
Here is how it works: First we put some food from her plate on her fork and say, “Phia, I think I’d like to eat this bite so keep an eye on it and make sure no one else eats it!” and then we turn our head to look at something else; she immediately STEALS the bite and eats it; she then taps the person on the shoulder and points to the empty fork and they say, “What!? Who ate my bite?”; then she will LIE and blame it on either someone else at the table or on some mythical squirrel/bear/bird etc… that did it. This repeats and escalates in incredulous disbelief at the disappearing bites until all the food is gone!
Tell me, what animals do your kids pretend to be? If they are grown, did they used to pretend?
Have you ever had or do you currently have a mohawk haircut? It’s something I’ve always wondered how it would look on me, so I decided to attempt cutting my own hair to see what it would look like.
When I went to get my haircut, the hairdresser refused to do it since she figured my wife would hate it (probably true), and now that Going Mom cuts my hair (except this time), she too refuses to grant my haircut wish. Guess the hairdresser has seen this from other married men in the past!
For the New Year, I decided one of my resolutions would be to have a mohawk and finally see how my large head would appear sporting the look of a Native American warrior!
First, take a look at my main motivation for wanting to cut my hair; bedhead.
No, no, wait, let me show you my “El Confidant” look…
…or lack thereof.
As Avery sat patiently ran all around her gated area throwing everything in site and screaming, I figured now would be the best time to make a first attempt at cutting my hair.
I setup in our living room for Avery to watch and had my cape, vacuum, cardboard box, and shears ready. *Buzzzzzzzzz* And off with my head hair!
Gaaahhhhh! WTF did I just do?!
Geeehhhhh, nothing good, that’s what!
And the most annoying part about my “longer” hair is how it goes over my ears. I still couldn’t manage to get that right!
After getting a big raspberry thumbs down from Avery, I ended my minute of mohawkdom and buzzed it all off.
Yeah, that’s better. Finally, I got the hair over my ears too!
Not bad for a novice, huh? Unless you count the mohawk, which I’m not!
And with that, I succeeded and failed at my New Year’s resolution before it even arrived!
Have you ever jumped the gun on a resolution and failed before the new year?
How do you like the haircut?
An at-home dad on a mission to keep it real when it comes to food, fun, and raising a healthy, happy family.
