Days of Whine and Roses

As a mother of twins, I was constantly warned during my pregnancy about how awful my life was going to be. I would never get to sleep, eat, shower, brush my teeth or wear clean clothes again. My life would be a never-ending cycle of feeding, pooping and crying and if I made it out of the first year alive, then it would be a miracle.

Those horrors never happened. My kids were excellent sleepers, eaters and poopers. When I got pregnant with my third child, the fear-mongering started again. The sibling rivalry, jealousy, regression and being outnumbered by kids would ruin us. Those things never happened, either.

I’ve learned over the years to take the predictions of doom regarding child rearing with a very large grain of salt (and if that salt is around the rim of a very large margarita glass, so much the better!). So when it came time to potty-train my kids, I figured that since everything else had been easy, this would be a piece of cake.

I have never been more wrong about anything in my life. I will spare the gory details of getting my twins potty-trained. To be honest, I think I’ve blocked a lot of it out of my mind – kind of like a survivor response to war. Post-traumatic stress, if you will.

And now the time has come to get my almost three year old boy to use the toilet instead of his favored Lightening McQueen pull-ups. Why in the name of all that is good and holy do the nice folks at Huggies put Mater and McQueen on every pull-up, making them so attractive to my son that he never wants to be without them? Make them ugly! Cover those pull-ups with pictures of broccoli and shampoo, and I guarantee kids would be potty-trained in minutes, instead of weeks (or months, as seems to be the case in our house).

Today, we had progress. The boy wore his Thomas the Tank Engine undies during his nap and woke up dry. I was thrilled! Tom Hanks wasn’t this happy when he made fire in Castaway. I was feeling good. And smug. Did I mention I was feeling smug? Off we went to soccer practice with the twins, only an extra pair of SpongeBob underpants in my purse to ward off any accidents.

Soccer practice wasn’t five minutes old when it started. “I have to poop, mumma.” Granted, the boy has never pooped anywhere but a diaper or pull-up, but as I said, I was feeling smug. “Sure, pal, let’s go poop.” 45 minutes. We spent 45 minutes on the toilet, off the toilet, on the toilet, off the toilet, on, off, on, off. Me being my encouraging self. Him being his stubborn self. I thought at one point that trying to get my son to poop on the toilet must be what coaching a man through child birth would be like, with my saying, “come on, honey, you can do it. Push, push. You can do it.” And him responding, “No, I can’t. I don’t want to. Hold my hand! Rub my back! Give me a kiss!”

We left the bathroom in a stalemate. There was no poop today. Even McQueen and Mater remain unsoiled this evening. I know he’ll get it eventually. And I know that when I am most smug is when I will be most harshly brought back down to earth. So next week, I will tuck a pull-up in my bag before soccer practice and let the boy poop where he wants to. Because potty-training is hard. And I’m not sure who has it tougher – the mom or the kid.

Like many other moms, I think my kids are “gifted.” No, my five year old son doesn’t do calculus, his twin sister can’t recite Shakespearean sonnets and my almost 3 year old still hasn’t quite mastered the fine art of potty training. But I stand by my assessment of “gifted” for one simple reason –

My children are, and always have been, bilingual. Fluent in both English and that particular language so loved by the cartoon-watching, fruit-snack eating, character-underwear-wearing set – Whinese.

My children are champion whiners. They can make any sentence sound like fingernails on a chalkboard. If whining were an Olympic sport, my kids would ensure a U.S. sweep of the medal board. They need no warm-up, no lead time, no practice beforehand. I have time and again marveled at their ability to go from normal speech to griping, grousing and bellyaching in the span of a fraction of a second.

There are days when it seems the whining will never end. The fighting over toys will never end. The teasing will never end. And the thought of refereeing these three kids for the next 15 years or so makes me so tired. And thirsty for a nice pinot grigio.

Days of Whine and Roses? The whining part my kids have down. The roses are the moments when the whining stops and my kids show me what strong, smart, kind people they are turning into. Of course, there are also days when the whining only stops because they’re asleep. And that’s when I break out my own wine. Because wine makes the whine that much easier to take.