Mediocre Drama

I am starting to believe that the only thing more mediocre than my mothering skills are the mothering skills of the people I hire to watch the Captain. I have been at the end of my rope with the babysitter for some time and am counting the days til late-August when I can finally say hasta la vista (insert "Baby" if you must for emphasis).

Clearly, the real problem is that I've only been picking the Captain up from her place on Fridays, which leaves me wide open for attack. As I've mentioned before, she has a Neanderthal view of parenting and seems to save up her pent up bullshit for days when I'm on pickup duty. If it's a Friday, all the better; she gives me a tongue lashing for everything that happened all week. So, here, for your mild amusement, are my last two Fridays in a two Act mini-Opera. PS - I envision the whole thing sung in Spanish...

La niñera es un cunt

Act I - The Potty

Now, just a little setting of the stage, the Captain has had absolutely no potty problems for months. Not only will he go in strange settings, he's mastering standing up when a proper step stool is present and even made an entire road trip to New York without any accidents. And it, therefore, perplexed us, that the only place he seems to be having "issues" is at the babysitter's house.

Me - How is he doing on the potty?

Babysitter - He doesn't want to go.

Me - Well, does he ask to go?

Babysitter - No. Never.

Me - That's so strange, because he always asks, not just us and his teachers but friends too.

Babysitter - (in a snarky tone) You know, I'm not one to tell someone how to raise their children (the audience laughs) but I know this woman who used to force her child to go on the potty and the child turned out strange.

Me - (aghast) Well, how can I be forcing him if he's asking to go?

Babysitter - (in disbelief) Oh, I wasn't saying YOU were forcing him.

Me - Well, it seems to me that if he's going at home, at school, and everywhere else, that it's simply a game he's started with YOU.

Babysitter - Oh.

Me - I'll show you how good he is. Captain (to the Captain)? Do you want to go to the potty.

CK - OK

Enter potty stage right

Me - Okay, Captain, where's the potty seat.

Babysitter - Oh, I don't have one.

The curtain falls.

Editors analysis - now, could it be that back in February when we started potty training and we took the time to go out and buy her a potty seat and dropped him off at her house with it, only to have her hand it right back to us with her exclaiming, "Oh, I don't need one I already have one," that she may have been...lying? And what's more, WHY?????? Is she so hung up on her old Italian ways of doing it her way that she can't for one second contemplate that an early potty trainer (under 2-1/2) might be a bit intimidated by the big bowl and if it doesn't mean any extra cleanup or drama that it couldn't hurt just to put him on the mother fucking seat?

Act II - Your child hits.

Our background for this blog entry is that every time the Babysitter wants to make me feel like a shitty parent she tells me that the Captain sometimes goes over and hits other kids and that she's never seen a child behave like that. He really should be put in a petri dish and studied.

Babysitter - The Captain sometimes goes over and hits other kids and I've never seen a child behave like that.

Me - Well, you've mentioned this before. Did you punish him?

Babysitter - Oh no. I won't do that. I'm just telling you so that you can take care of it at home.

Me - (defensively) Well, Babysitter, I'm not really sure what to tell you. You've mentioned this before and since I don't have other children around the house it's difficult to correct behavior that I'm not seeing. They correct him at school when it happens...

Babysitter - Well, obviously they're not doing a good job if he's still doing it (yes, apparently she believes it is their job to fix and not hers)!

Me - ...and he's no longer hitting at school because of it. And if I'm ever around it I correct it, but if you aren't going to punish him when it happens here I don't see what else you want me to do.

Babysitter - Well, I never would have told you I knew you were going to get upset.

Me - (raising my voice) You told me and I'm telling you what you should do. If he lashes out at another child he has to sit out and not play because playing is a privilege.

Babysitter - Well, I tried punishing him a couple of times in the beginning (Editors note - ummm...the beginning was 7 months ago) and it didn't work so I don't punish him.

(changing the topic)

So, Mediocre Mama, have you lost some weight?

Curtain Closes. The end.

This woman is killing me every time I see her. I feel like I'm running from the living dead when I see her (Editor's Note - Zombie movies rock, fyi), like if I let her speak one word to me she's going to suck my brain out.

3-1/2 more months. Holy crap I might not make it.

Peeing on the hottie.

In case you thought it eerily silent on the subject of potty training, yes it was intentional. For me it was a case of this is too good to be true and it won't last why jinx it. But I think we're far enough along to declare it. So here goes...

Captain Kid is officially daytime potty trained.

There, it's out. Now any future failures will come back to haunt me and I will declare that I jinxed it, but the time has come to rejoice (instead of my usual swearing and bitching). Though I wish I could take credit for this one, this was entirely the Captain's Everest. Much to our shock, some earlier anal retentive behaviors came out in our favor. He figured out that, no, he doesn't enjoy being dirty and yes, there is a quick and easy solution. Every day it goes a little bit further, with the Captain relieving himself in strange and exotic places. Where last week he would only perform in the comfort of his own home, this week he has transported his skills to friends' houses and school. And then tonight his potty experience took him to Lebanon as he gave up Number 1 sidesaddle in the bathroom of the exotic Lebanese Taverna. Fancy stuff.

The Captain loves going to the bathroom, so much so that instead of peeing on the potty he now declares that he's "peeing on the hottie." A bit crude for sure, but who am I to undercut his enthusiasm?

Potty-911

I just pose one simple question in tonight's post. And I know that I'm spending a whole lot of time on this subject but, yes, you can expect more.

Why has no one invented a 24-hour hotline for parents on the edge of insanity in the never ending battle of the bowl? I mean, they've got every manner of support line, yet for something like this that can drive you to drink, wouldn't it be prudent and in the best interest of...society? I'm just thinking of the children. Just saying.

Potty training, it's total bullshit.

When does this fucking training end? It's getting to a level of panic. He wants to go in the potty, but he doesn't want to go in the potty, but he wants a diaper on, but he doesn't want to go in the diaper. Hours will pass with no activity and then a sudden utterance of "Oh, no" and a frenzied run to the bathroom only to just stop short of doing anything there. Tonight he stood in the bathroom hysterical crying, desperate to pee, screaming "diaper diaper" and with every little desperate jag a drop of pee hit the floor.

I can report to date he's successfully done everything on the potty. And I can also report that he's developing the bladder of a full grown man because he's exercising that muscle a whole lot. Not to mention the fact that he's constipating the hell out of himself.

Holy hell, when does the drama end? If he were wetting or messing and didn't care it would be annoying but at least I wouldn't have to deal with his obvious neurosis. He's paranoid beyond reason and after a long day it only gets worse. As it stands, he's potty training his way to OCD.

The boy who pooped.

Remember when the Captain took off his diaper and ran around the house creating skid marks wherever he went?

Or how about the time he pooped in the tub?

And then my personal favorite, the time he pooped in his crib and I did a bad cleanup job and walked around an expensive department store with it smeared all over my shirt? I heart my life.

Well today, despite the odds (he's had a case of the runs since Wednesday) Captain the Kid dropped it like it's hot and actually pooped in the right place, the potty, three times already today.

It all went down as such because we put him in underpants today with no diaper parachute. Shockingly he took to it like a pig in shit. How long can we keep this up? Dunno. And with the babysitter threatening to diaper him despite our wishes I'm not confident that this is the end of this subject.

But I guess I'll worry about all that later. For today it's stickers and cookies, celebrations in the street, and kisses a plenty for Captain Kid, the boy who pooped.

The Babysitter's Club

I somehow feel as though I've been knocked over the head with a club, dragged around by my hair, and thrown into a cave to watch the children while Fred Flintstone goes out to do the hunting. No, not by the Deviant Dad, but by the woman who watches the Captain in the afternoon, who clearly comes from the school of the man is responsible for earning the money, the mother is responsible for taking all blame related to the rearing of the child.

Truth be told, she comes from a different era, a very traditional Italian background and, well, a different political persuasion from myself. One day she complained to me that her aunt has a couple of "Spanish girls" caring for her and they don't speak any English and don't know CPR. When I suggested that her aunt pay to send the girls for a CPR course she exclaimed, "How can they learn CPR? They don't speak English!"

Anyway.

Perhaps it's this discord that creates friction. But you would think that I would be immune from friction or confrontation, given that I haven't been to her house since my back went out nearly 2 months ago. Yet, somehow she manages it.

Yesterday, after our flogging in the principal's office, the Deviant Dad dropped the Captain off for his afternoon care and made an inquiry to get an overview of his behavior at her house, a synopsis of how he spends his afternoons with her, and just a general yet more specific sense of how his day at her home looks. The point being, if we are to change his "behavior issues" we need to have everyone on board. She politely answered his questions and then proceeded to call me on my cell phone five minutes after he left. What I listened to was a 10 minute rant of defensiveness and indignation, not to mention a lecture on the nature of children and how they all hit and throw things from time to time. I politely tried to get off the phone twice as I was driving on the Beltway and finally told her that the Dad would call her back. He did and she gave him two minutes of lovely and all was well.

From where I'm sitting, my guess is that she has a crush on my husband and just won't confront him. That or it's that Neanderthal perspective on the mother-father/woman-man dynamic and who should be held accountable for transgressions and malfeasance. Boys will be boys. Oh, men. ;-)

I was fuming. And not just because I was once again getting the back of her hand while the Dad got the batting eyelashes.

And once I got beyond the anger, the bigger questions started popping up. What if she doesn't want to work with us on this? What are we going to do about the fact that she refuses to help with potty training? Actually, when we brought up potty training she exclaimed that it could be done in a day and suggested we go to Dr.Phil.com. (Anyway.) And then the even harder question...do I need to, once again, torture myself into finding him a new nanny? As I'm sure you remember from the Nannycide episode, going through a transition to another daycare situation is less than desirable. But if it's a matter of helping to curtail his behavior and working with his teachers, who I know have his best interest at heart, well...how can I not make a change?

One of the most difficult decisions parents have to make is who will care for their child. When you find someone you trust, someone you know who isn't a deviant or molester and who has a generally good nature, it becomes too easy to stay with what is comfortable.

Moreover, the Captain loves her. So in that sense, contemplating firing her feels a bit like if Florence Henderson thought about firing Alice. Only an overbearing bigoted Alice who can't imagine that CPR classes are also administered in Spanish.

Pottygate update.

I know I don't normally post so quickly. Hell, usually I like to wait a good 2 weeks to get my readers fully alienated from my life, but we had a breakthrough. After lunch, the Captain stripped down once more and headed for the potty. This time he asked for Cheerios, which made me think, wow, he wants a snack. This must mean he's committed. The Kid hops on the toilet and I run off to get Cheerios. When I return, believe it or not, he's sitting on the toilet and yes he's doing it. Pee's flying everywhere and even a drop or two got in the bowl.

All hail mighty Dog, though. Just like the good doormat she is, she walks over to the toilet and laps up the urine. Good dog. Woof.