An Important Announcement

People, I think you might want to sit down for this. As you may know, I have many failings as a mother. My children still drink milk from a bottle. They still use pacis at night (and occasionally at other points in the day just so I can confuse them with inconsistent rules). They are still vegetarians in a very annoying Gwyneth Paltrow kind of way. They might even be vegans except I'm not sure what that means exactly. But THEY ARE NOW POTTY TRAINED. Well, sort of. Accidents are occurring (our couch now has the faint scent of cat urine and we don't own a cat but whatevs) but for the most part, they are using the potty.

This of course occurred BECAUSE of my failing as a mother. I accidentally ran out of diapers. I may write a potty training book. It will go something like this. "Wait until they are embarrassingly old to be crapping their pants. Forget to buy diapers. The End." It will be the shortest best-seller in the history of publishing. Oprah will beg me to come on her show, despite my having broken the publishing world's cardinal rule -- never bash The Opes! I will comply only if she promises -- in writing -- that Jenny McCarthy will not be on the same program. I will be hailed as an international potty training expert and parenting forums will pay me absurd amounts of money to give (very brief) talks on potty training which will consist of "Hello mothers and fathers out there. Forget to buy diapers! Thank you very much! I love you too!"

As seen above, my children are being rewarded with treats as big as their heads. This weekend we have to go pick out bikes. It's the middle of winter in Chicago so I have no idea where they'll ride them but we promised them bikes when they got potty trained. Perhaps I should add in a chapter about bribing in the book -- or better yet, I'll save that as my follow-up parenting masterpiece. So, I'm not sure if there is a Mother of the Year award floating around out there, but feel free to nominate me. My children are almost 39 months old and (pretty much) potty trained. Surely that should garner me something?

Just out of curiosity, when do they start wiping their own butts? When you answer, add on two years past the time most kids do it as that's when it's likely to happen around here.