by Rachel Toalson | General Blog
It’s a celebratory day when kids are able to buckle their own seat belts and pour their own glasses of milk and bathe themselves and cook their own food (wait, when does this happen again? I’M READY ANYTIME, KIDS).
When they’re little, we spend so much of our days doing every single thing for them that every tiny little mastery feels like a major victory.
But in order for them to learn how to do things for themselves, in order for them to achieve autonomy, there is this frightening limbo between beginning and mastering when we must let them practice.
I say it’s frightening, because I know. Here’s what working toward autonomy looks like in our home:
Pouring milk
The 8-year-old: Check the level on the milk. If it’s less than half-filled, overcorrect, because you got this. If it’s too full, try anyway, and spill a whole ocean where you can let your Lego man swim before you try to clean it up. And by cleaning it up, you mean wiping it toward the floor so it soaks not only the counter but inside the drawers and cabinets, too. Conveniently forget to clean up the spills you can’t see that your mom will smell three days later.
The 5-year-old: Only pour from a gallon that is less than half-filled, because you’re careful like that.
The 4-year-old: Pour anytime you feel like it, but do it from the floor. Wipe up the mess you’ve made with a paper towel but no cleaner so the stickiness will steal someone’s socks tomorrow. Laugh hysterically when it does.
Tying shoes
The 8-year-old: Tie one, and then get really frustrated when the other one doesn’t tie as easily because everyone is talking. Tell everyone to be quiet so you can concentrate and then try again. Tell them to quit looking at you. Make three good attempts, and then take off your shoe that just won’t tie today and throw it across the room. Say you’ll go to school with only one shoe on. You don’t care. Change your mind five minutes before you’re supposed to leave, after you’ve forgotten where it landed when you threw it. Your dad will find it and help you put it on.
The 5-year-old: Don’t even try. Your mom will do it.
Packing up
8-year-old: Look in your room for your agenda. Complain that you can’t find it, even though it’s sitting just beside your desk, right by the four thousand Lego pieces you dumped out last night and “forgot” to clean up. Say it’s gone forever. Say someone must have stolen it. Say you’ll never be able to write down your school assignments again. Ever. Say “You must have moved it,” when your mom comes downstairs with it.
5-year-old: Let your mom know you can’t find your red folder, then laugh when she pulls it out from under your lunch box, the same place it always is in the mornings.
Sweeping the floor
8-, 5- and 4-year-olds: Only sweep a square area of four tiles across and four tiles down. Don’t even try to get under the table, where all the food is. It’s too hard.
Wiping the table
8-, 5- and 4-year-olds: Push all the extra food to the floor by the sponge. Be sure to leave streaks all over the table, because you didn’t want to use the cleaner, OR leave a lake because you had a little too much fun spraying the cleaner and the sponge is too soaked to absorb anymore.
Doing dishes
8-, 5- and 4-year-olds: All the silverware must fit into as few slots as possible, even though there are six slots and three that are still empty. There is no rhyme or reason to putting dishes in; just throw them randomly in whatever space is available. After all, the dishwasher is like a car wash for plates and bowls.
Putting laundry away
8-year-old: Hanging clothes don’t have to be hung up, per se. They can be stuffed into the underwear drawer, because it’s not full, and all the other random empty drawers in the room.
5-year-old: Don’t pay attention to the labels your mom put up in the closet. Just put your clothes wherever you feel like putting them, even though you share your closet with three other brothers. That way, when you dress for school, you’ll have a legitimate reason for dressing in a shirt two sizes too small. “It was on my side,” you’ll say.
4-year-old: Get mad trying to hang up shirts, and throw your hangers across the floor so some of them break and your parents will help you hang up the rest.
2-year-olds: Rearrange the pajama drawer eight times a day because your parents let you put clothes in it once.
Putting on shoes
2-year-olds: It doesn’t matter if shoes don’t match or if they’re different sizes. Just put them on. Shoes are shoes are shoes. Stop trying to match them and put them on the right feet, parents.
Cleaning your room
8-year-old: Make sure all the books that are supposed to go on the bookshelves in your room end up in your bed instead. That way your mom won’t be able to find the library books when they’re due. Push everything else in the closet and shut the door. You don’t need the closet anyway, now that your clothes are stuffed in drawers.
Bathing
8-, 5- and 4-year-olds: You really only need to wash your hair, your belly and your feet. Everything else is already magically clean.
Dressing
8-year-old: Who cares if the sweatpants you’re wearing aren’t yours but belong to your 2-years-younger brother and look more like capris than pants? They were in your room, stuffed in a drawer. Make sure you leave your pajamas on the floor so they won’t make it into the laundry and you can complain two days after laundry that you don’t have any more pajamas. Also, make sure you forget to put your shoes on before getting in the car, because you just know there’s a pair in the car (there isn’t).
I know that eventually they will get good at all this, because practice makes perfect.
Right?
Rachel is a writer, poet, editor and musician who is raising five (going on six) boys to love books and poetry and music and art and the wild outdoors—all the best bits of life. She shares her fiction and nonfiction writings over at her blog, and, when she’s not buried in a writing journal or a new song or a kid crisis at home, she enjoys reading Cormac McCarthy, Toni Morrison, William Faulkner and the poetry of Rilke. Follow her on Twitter @racheltoalson.
by Rachel Toalson | General Blog
I love my kids very much! Maybe I didn’t fully know what I signed up for when having 5 of them (who does?), but I stand by and live with the choices and the gifts. They are amazing blessings and I can’t imagine life without them. I have to say those things (which are absolutely true) so that I don’t sound like a terrible person when I tell you that sometimes I just want to run away screaming from my house.
Raising young children is one of the most the single most challenging thing I have ever faced in my life. Stand up comedian Jim Gaffigan said it best when he described what it’s like to have 4 children (one fewer than we have). He said “Imagine you’re drowning… and then someone hands you a baby.” It’s true, I feel like I’m barely making it to the surface sometimes and gulping desperately for air before I am pulled back down into the swirling torrent that is parenthood.
These little people we call our kids can be incredibly adorable, inspiring, funny and surprising. Simultaneously they can be incredibly selfish, frustrating, infuriating and annoying. Not to mention, often one of the most maddening things about kids is that they act like a big fat mirror, reflecting back to you all of your shortcomings as a human being.
Oh, and the mess. I’ll admit, I’m not great at putting away my clothes and keeping my desk tidy, but it sometimes seems as if my kids’ sole purpose in life is removing cleanliness from any room they occupy. They are masters at this. It takes them 5 minutes (2 minutes if they work together) to completely undo hours worth of cleaning. Plus the food everywhere. How do you get food on the ceiling? And all of the bodily fluids. All of them! Like I said. Sometimes I just want to run away.
This is where the help comes in and literally saves my children and their on-the-brink-of-insanity parents. The help comes in many forms. It could be someone bringing us a meal or coming in and organizing a closet for us. It could be friends watching the kids for an evening or grandparents taking the kids for a weekend so that Rachel and I can hang out and communicate without having to shout over the noise or guard against the constant threat of interruption. It could be a couple giving us stuff that we might need because they’re a few years further down the road and they don’t need it anymore.
If you are a person who has done that for us or for someone else… there just aren’t words. You are a saint. You are a Godsend. You are an angel from heaven. Thank you, from the deepest place in my heart. Thank you! Because, despite my rambling vent about the difficulties, which are really more a reflection of my poor attitude than they are of our actual hardship, I love my kids so much. The help that you provide, whether in big ways or small, helps me to be a more whole person, and a better parent to my kids. The gifts that you give of your time or resources demonstrate for my kids what it looks like to be generous and what it looks like to receive generosity. The presence that you share with my kids offers them a more diverse perspective on life and how people interact with each other outside of our home.
One day our home will look completely different and we will have the ability to do the same for someone else on a more regular basis. We are excitedly looking forward to that day. It’s not out of a feeling of obligation or wanting to “pay it forward.”. We want to do it because we’ve seen the life and healing that it has brought to our family and how these acts of kindness are helping shape a hopeful future for our boys and the men they will become and we want to be a part of that for someone else one day. We’ve felt the joy of giving of ourselves in the small ways we can now.
If you have been thinking about reaching out to a family that might need help, but you’re worried about being weird or awkward, do it anyway. If you’re a mama or daddy who has trouble accepting help because your life feels too messy, or you don’t want to inconvenience people, or you don’t even know how to articulate the kind of help you need, TAKE THE HELP ANYWAY. The first step is always the hardest. And again, for anyone who is now helping or has ever helped our family, in big and small ways (there really are no small ways), I can’t say it enough… thank you.
by Rachel Toalson | General Blog
(That’s me in the back corner, outnumbered by all these boys. Don’t I look tired? Yeah, well, I am.)
Every new year, my husband and I make goals for everything.
And I mean everything. Spiritual, financial, personal, business-related, marriage goals, family goals, reading goals, learning goals. All kinds of goals.
We don’t like resolutions, because resolutions are something you make and then break. We like goals, because goals are something we work toward and may or may not accomplish throughout the course of a year, but at least we know we tried—and just trying is to be applauded in the life of a parent.
I’ve been making goals since I was a kid. I know it’s a little weird, but I was always that kid. I wanted to finish my homework 10 minutes faster and play outside for 30 minutes more after school and eat black-eyed peas for New Year’s lunch without gagging.
These days my goals are hardly more refined, mostly because I’m now a parent.
Here’s a look at some of my parent-goals for 2015.
1. Get more sleep. Or nap more. Or pretend I’ve passed out for 15 minutes on the couch. Anything to get kids to leave me alone.
I realize this is most likely more difficult than my idealistic little mind can even grasp, since we have a new baby coming in February and everyone knows new babies, added to five already-existing boys, equals no sleep. It may even equal negative sleep. But I have not given up on this goal that cycles back around every year, because someday. I just know someday.
2. Stop walking barefoot around the house.
Have you seen this picture?
That’s my 8-year-old’s room, where his 300,000 Lego pieces have multiplied all over the floor. And while Legos are supposed to remain contained in his corner of the house, they somehow migrate into all the other rooms, which means it’s not even remotely safe to walk anywhere barefoot.
But why would I want to? My floors haven’t been cleaned in WAY, WAY, WAY too long. I can’t even stomach anymore what I may be stepping on.
Why are my socks sticking to the kitchen floor? I don’t really want to know.
Everyone got slippers for Christmas this year, so that’s what we’ll all be wearing from here on out.
3. Clean the house at least once.
Hey, when you’re the mom of five, going on six, boys, you have really, really, really low expectations. Boys undo all the hard work in seconds, just as soon as they decide to go to the bathroom. On that note…
4. Mark my bathroom as a “no boys allowed” space.
Lately we’ve been breaking up the boys for baths, bathing half of them in our nice garden tub and the other half in their own, smaller tub. My nice garden tub is now disgustingly dirty. I really don’t know where all this dirt comes from. Their hair? Their faces? The bottom of their feet? I have a theory. Dirt comes from boy.
Not only have they destroyed my garden tub, but they use my toilet, the one toilet in the house I’d like to call mine. Sometimes they forget to pull the seat up (I realize this is the opposite of many of their male counterparts, but it’s just one of the weird variations my boys have on habits of the male species), and since I’m usually the first one to sit on the seat after it’s been abused by a boy…well, let’s just say I feel like crying when there is wetness that shouldn’t be there.
They are also, obviously, very proud of what comes out of their bodies into the toilet and so leave it there for all the world to see.
Please, please, please, just give me a bathroom of my own.
5. Budget for a house cleaner.
I know this seems like the easy way out, but all the bathrooms in my house (including mine) smell like pee and wet dog and dirty socks, and the glass surfaces (mirrors supposedly hung in kids-can’t-reach places and a glass-top dining room table…what were we thinking???) are so smudged you can’t even see your real face in them. Sometimes you’ll wonder if your vision is going.
A house cleaner would be nice, I think, because I can’t possibly keep up with all the hands and feet and elbows and knees and other parts that shouldn’t be mentioned here.
And, honestly, I don’t know that I want to.
6. Read fewer articles that lie to me.
These would be articles like those titled, “How to never have to clean your home” (about how people maintain on a daily basis so there’s no deep cleaning that ever needs to be done) and “12 easy home projects to do in 15 minutes” (kids add three hours to that 15 minutes) and “eating paleo can be affordable.” These people have clearly never had children. Or five.
7. Go a whole day without whining or complaining. Invite my children to do the same.
Sometimes we get in these funks as parents, whining and complaining about what they’re doing or not doing, and all the while they’re watching us, and when we say, “Please talk in your big boy voice. I can’t understand you when you’re whining,” do you know what they’re thinking?
Same goes for you.
Yes, the same goes for us. So maybe one way to get our kids to stop whining and complaining is to stop doing it ourselves.
This might take some work.
8. Get better at asking for help.
I know our society encourages us to pretend like we’ve got everything perfectly handled. But we don’t. Maybe we do about 5 percent of the time. Or 1 percent of the time. The other 95-99 percent of the time we’re one dangerous thread away from snapping into crazy-parent mode, and we’re wishing there was some kind of help and feeling mad at ourselves for not asking in the first place.
Asking for help isn’t weakness. It’s strength that isn’t often celebrated.
I don’t know how many of these goals will become a reality, but a mom can dream, right? And I’m dreaming big for 2015.
Obviously.
by Rachel Toalson | General Blog
Christmas this year is a continuation of what is becoming a new yearly tradition that I am calling the Toalson Family Holiday Blitz. Here’s what it looks like:
1. Make a list of all of the gifts we will lovingly make by hand.
2. Schedule a variety of activities we’ll do together as a family. (Look at Christmas lights, go to a Christmas eve service, make Christmas cookies, make ornaments, etc.)
3. Dust off all of the Christmas movies we plan to re-watch.
4. Procrastinate.
5. Finally start working down the list the week before Christmas and try to cram EVERYTHING into 7 days.
6. Bend the rules about how much screen time the kids are allowed to have.
7. Break the rules about how many treats and snacks we are allowed to eat.
8. Rush everywhere and use the word “hurry” at least 500 times per trip.
9. Look incredulously at the children who are now completely off their rockers due to the aforementioned screen time and junk food.
10. Yell and scream at one another.
11. Threaten to take away Christmas at least 3 times.
12. Stay up way too late the 2-3 nights before Christmas playing catch up.
13. Offset the lack of sleep with too much coffee.
14. Offset the over-abundance of crazy with some sweet, sweet wine.
15. Wrap all of the gifts the night before. Estimate falsely the length of wrapping paper required for at least 5 gifts.
16. Oh, and listen to Christmas music the WHOLE time.
We know that Christmas is more than the presents and the movies and the treats and the music. We know about Christmas being a simple time of year when you get to really enjoy the people that you love. I’m not going to write an article here about how we need to do fewer things so that we can enjoy and appreciate what this season is really about, because the truth is, we love a lot of the things on our list. They were born out of a desire to grow closer together as a family and to build familiar and beloved traditions into our year.
The problem is not that there are too many things on our list. The problem is that we’ve made no room in our lives for the important things on that list during the other times of the year.
Let me explain. Our day to day lives feel jam packed. From waking at 5am to crashing at 9:30, only half-an-hour after wrestling the kids into their beds, we feel like there is no breathing room. Any deviation from our strict, regimented schedule and routine seems to set our home and our lives into a tailspin. No wonder we didn’t get any of that stuff done earlier in the year. There’s simply no room for it. Or is there?
The things on the list don’t just represent how we want to live as a family during Christmas, but all year. Making things with our hands… paintings, drawings, poetry, crafts, etc. so we can experience the accomplishment of making something from nothing, and seeing the joy in another’s face when gifts are given. Enjoying special activities together regularly and experiencing things we all enjoy so we can build lasting memories and be reminded that we belong to each other. Bending and breaking the rules every once in a while so that we don’t merely see the structure as a cage that holds us captive, but a rhythm that lays a foundation for the melody we are writing.
In order for us to live into these things we want to be a part of our identity as a family, we have to make them a regular part of our day to day lives. In order to do that, there may some things we need to cut off. I’m adding something to my list this year that I hope will bring new clarity and freedom for our family to become who we want to be. I will make time to take an inventory of our day to day and ask the question, ‘How do these things reflect who we want to be as a family?’ It’s so easy to creep into habits and routines that, while they may have solved a short term problem or issue once upon a time, are no longer serving a purpose. We need to zoom out every once in a while so we can actually see those otherwise invisible things. Maybe this is worth doing more than once or even twice a year.
I hope your Christmas experience is one that brings your family closer together and reminds you of the things that are truly important. I hope you can discover those things you can let go, and are able to see the places where you can recapture who you are as a family. From our family to yours, Merry Christmas!
by Rachel Toalson | General Blog
It’s been a month since I looked forward to bedtime.
Usually this time, 8 p.m. sharp, is a brilliant shining light in the long stretch of a boy-filled day, because it’s the time I finally get to hide away in my room and ignore those non-emergency cries and hang out with my husband or read or just go to bed myself.
But we’ve been potty training twins, and now they’re in a room they can escape from, because how can you successfully potty train a 2-year-old without giving them access to the potty at night?
Bedtime has now become drive-Mama-crazy time.
Because now it’s not just the cries of older boys that come knocking on our door (“I need some pajamas” from the just-turned-8-year-old, who still hasn’t put away last week’s laundry, so his pajamas are buried beneath all those Star Wars books scattered all over his room; a “Where’s my blanket?” from the 5-year-old, because earlier today someone carried it downstairs and decided it was too much work to bring it back up; an “I don’t have a pillow” from the 4-year-old who doesn’t look very well, because there’s a pillow right beside his face).
Now the (maybe emergency? maybe not?) cries of twins have joined the cacophony.
“I need go poo poo in the potty bad, Mama,” they say. (Do they? I just don’t know.)
“I pee pee in my underwear, Daddy,” they say. (We check. It seems to be a threat of some kind.)
“I poo poo. Ew!” (This one brings a mama and daddy running, but it also seems to be an empty threat—at least until the day we decide to ignore it.)
Potty training is challenging, because it’s so dang hard to know when they’re telling the truth or just stalling bedtime.
So, for a while, every time one of those calls came, we let them out of bed to go potty.
Here’s what would happen 99 percent of time.
One twin: “I need go poo poo really bad, Mama.”
Other twin: “Me too.”
Mama: “OK. One at a time.”
I take one twin out of the room to go potty, and on the way there he finds a stuffed frog he didn’t even know he was missing until he saw it, so he picks it up. Then he sees a book he wants to put back on the library shelf and a toy that shouldn’t even be upstairs and a piece of paper he wants to throw in the trash when he (finally, if ever) makes it to the bathroom.
Mama: “Looks like you didn’t have to go so badly after all.”
Twin, shaking his head. “I go bad, Mama.”
Mama: “Then let’s go to the bathroom.”
Twin: “OK.”
Once on the potty, he’ll strain for a few seconds, just to put on a show, and then a little pee trickles out, probably so I can’t say he didn’t have to go, because look, he did, and then he says, “Done.”
Repeat with twin 2.
We caught on to their little game.
So lately, when those cries start coming, we give them one more potty escapade, whatever it may look like, and then we tell them they need to hold it until morning, and we cross our fingers.
I’ve never been a big fan of transitions like these, because they can seem so difficult and never-ending when we’re right in the middle of them, but we’ve had three other boys who prove that someday, maybe weeks from now or maybe (God forbid) months from today, these twins will know and understand the rules, and bedtime will become the sweet time it was meant to be for all parents everywhere in the world.
Transition times will always, eventually, someday, smooth into normalcy.
One of these days, our twins will realize that their I-need-to-potty cries aren’t working anymore, because we just took them five minutes ago, and they couldn’t possibly need to go again already, but for now, they’ll play their game and keep us wondering and hoping and crossing fingers.
For now, I will dread bedtime because it’s no longer rest time.
For now, I will sit in the library recliner instead of lying in my comfy bed, reading in between those reminders for twins to stay in their beds, pacifying myself when I feel like crying that this will not last forever.
Thank God it will not last forever.
by Rachel Toalson | General Blog
Our twin boys are now 2 and a half years old, or 32 months old for those of you who like to count things that way. When potty training them first came up, even with Rachel’s insistence upon using cloth diapers for the twin poop factories (I endorse and encourage cloth diapers by the way… but it does suck), changing diapers still remained a favorable prospect to the idea of potty training twin boys and all of the potential mess and frustration that goes with it. We were in no hurry.
About 6-7 months ago they started showing signs that they might be ready to start trying it out, but we were not ready, and that’s what matters, right? So we ignored the signs and kept the status-quo. Every time we would approach the conversation about potty training, our choice to wait simply came down to the unknown potential of disaster and burn out that we wanted to avoid. There were a few months in there that we tried to set start dates saying things like, “We’ll start after this trip” or “we’ll try it out after school starts.” But we kept finding reasons to wait, even little ones like “I have to go to the grocery store this week, so we should probably wait,” or “The weather app says it might rain so we should hold off.” Finally, we settled on a start date and resolved to follow through.
After plenty of experience with the older 3, we’d learned to employ a strategy that was simple and straightforward. Take them to the potty often, reward and praise success (or good attempts), keep the mop handy, and shame them when they made a mistake. Okay, I’m just joking about that last one. Shaming doesn’t work, unfortunately.
Step 1.
The first step is more complicated and time consuming than we had ever experienced before. For all the hassle of just taking one to the potty, taking two was a little insane. You’ve got to help them take off their pants AND shoes because they want complete freedom of motion while they sit on the potty. You’ve got to set them onto the potty and monitor their hands so they don’t play with the water (we opted for a sitting pee for better accuracy with aim which is HIGHLY important), help them aim everything, EVERYTHING, in the right direction, with your “free hand” guard the toilet paper, help them wipe, put their pants and their shoes back on, and hold them awkwardly as they attempt to wash their hands.
In the meanwhile, the other one has already taken to playing in the toilet water and filling the bowl to the rim with toilet paper. So now you have to wash his hands, and repeat all of the previous steps while using your stretched out leg and foot to block out the first from the toilet area. Not to mention, if there is an accident, now you’ve got to clean that out and get fresh clothes for the offender while he runs around the house, airing out his cheeks.
At first we had a “take them every time they say they need to go” policy, but when they learned that saying “I nee pee pee paw-dee” would get them out of their highchairs and car seats, and prolong the bedtime routine, we had to abandon this approach. It was either that or take them each to the potty 50 times per day.
Step 2.
After you’ve done all of the above, you’ve got to muster the will to celebrate. Don’t worry, that desperation and brokenness you feel can be channeled into mournful cries of praise for your toddler. And then, all of the books say, you should give your child a gift for not polluting the house with his excrement. We give stickers as a reward for a successful potty visit which means we have stickers ALL OVER the house. It’s amazing the things a child will do for a sticker. We wondered if maybe we should start using them for other things like chores, or staying in bed, etc. but ultimately decided we wanted them not to be motivated by gifts, but by their intrinsic values. That’s how it should be for using the potty. At some point, not walking around in your own feces should be its own reward.
Step 3.
Keep the mop handy. And the broom, and the disinfectant, and the stain remover, and the air freshener, and the steam vac, and a local professional cleaning service. Messes will happen. A lot of them. In the beginning there were so many messes. These twins are little poop factories. The sooner you accept the reality that there will be a lot of mess to clean up, the better your chances of not freaking out when they happen in the most inconvenient place and time, in ways that are so vile you shake your head in disbelief and maybe, just maybe, feel a little stirring of pride at what your child is capable of producing. A light-hearted, calm attitude actually speeds the process along. In those moments when you feel they might never get it, find comfort in the thought that they won’t still be pooping themselves (hopefully) when they’re teenagers, and by then you’ll have much, MUCH bigger things to worry about.
Simply put, shaming and stressing out only make things worse. Avoid it at all costs. Drink wine if necessary. Here’s where I try to look at it from my child’s perspective. As an adult, I’ve been successfully pooping in the toilet for so long, I can’t even remember a time when that was actually a skill I was trying to develop. I’m, like, a master at it. Our young children are not. They’ve never done this before. It’s always been taken care of for them. Can you think of a time in your life when someone has been doing something for you that you don’t really know how to do, and then suddenly hands the responsibility of doing it into your inexperienced hands? Learning to use the potty is right there in the middle of tons of other new things our children are trying to learn and understand for the first time. I’m surprised they are not more stressed out. Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt and imagine that this is a monumental challenge that we have been given the privilege of helping them overcome.
It’s also important to note that the ability to “hold it” and use the potty depend greatly on mental and physical developmental milestones. If your child has not yet reached these milestones, they are not ready. You wouldn’t try to make an infant walk… it’s the same thing. Overnight dryness depends on a different set of mental and physical developments and lags behind daytime readiness. Daytime readiness generally occurs between the ages of 24 and 27 months, but can vary from child to child.
I’m happy to say that in a relatively short amount of time, our twins are doing great. There’s still the occasional accident, and taking them both to the potty is still quite a production, but we are able to go out in public, send them to the grandparents, AND we were able to stop using stickers! Hallelujah! I hope our experience and insight gives you some encouragement as you tackle potty training with your little one, or two or three or more.
I just had a panic attack imagining what it might be like potty training triplets. Shudders.
