Art is Life

Prelude:
One of the first things I taught Benjamin was that paintings and batiks hanging on our walls are "art." When he started drawing and painting, er, scribbling and squishing, I told him he made art. We hung his pieces on a few walls and he would always walk by, point, and declare, "Art!"

Story 1:
Some weeks ago, Benjamin climbed up on the couch and drew some orange marks on the wall. I have not cleaned them off yet.

My friend was in town last weekend. She and I sat on the couch and talked for an hour, never acknowledging the stray crayon marks. Benjamin, tired of his drawing being thus disregarded, climbed up on the couch, looked Aimee straight in the eye, pointed to his orange marks, and announced, "Art! Benjamin art!"


Story 2:

After finishing his breakfast one morning, Benjamin told me, "Make art."

"You want to color?"

"Make art," he replied.

So I cleaned off his high chair tray and gave him some paper and crayons and he proceeded to make some art.

Potty Training: Day 1

We have officially (sort of) started potty training here at The P-Pod. You might remember that some months ago Mama brought home a kid-sized toilet. Though Little P did sit on it once a day and occasionally pee in it due to sheer luck, Mama did not take the training seriously. Until yesterday (sort of).

For all of his waking hours, Little P was naked as a jaybird. (It helped that the weather was a balmy 102 degrees and The P-Pod is not using air conditioning because we are choosing to live below our means in order to save aggressively for a while...that's another entry.) What Mama means is that it was a yucky, sweaty day (week! in fact) and Little P was probably very happy to have nothing but his own heiny between him and the paltry breeze.

I digress. He was naked. The little toilet was positioned in the kitchen for easy access. Mama read the Potty Time book with him and there was much playing with the toilet in anticipation of using it. Inn fact, the cool thing about this book is that it has photographs of human children doing potty activities. Sooooo much better than cartoons and drawings found in other books. Little P actually looked at the little boy on the potty and then got on his toilet and sat the same way.

This book also contains a magnetic chart with colorful, fun magnets that can be stuck on the day of the week whenever a child successfully does business in the toilet. Little P's eyes lit up over this. Though Mama knows she could do the same thing herself with stickers, for $12.95 and no further effort, this sounded like a good value. Let us emphasize no further effort. Mama needs these kinds of options lately.

DAY 1 STATS

# of hits: 1

# of misses on wood floor: 4

# of misses on carpet: 1

These statistics may look daunting, but Mama found that cleaning up a few ounces of pee off the floor in order to not have a piles of diapers to wash at the end of the day was so much easier! The misses also teach Mama about when Little P tends to need to go. Mama cannot for the life of her figure out what cues he gives prior to needing a toilet. Mama also learned that if Little P comes into the room saying "diaper" that's a sign that the need for a toilet already passed, and Mama needs to go look for a small puddle and possibly some track marks somewhere. Also, periodically sitting him on the toilet and reading a book has not yet produced any results.

So we're off and running. Mama will refrain from giving you daily updates and further gruesome details, mostly because she doesn't have time, and partially because it might be TMI. But you may hear if any significant challenges or progress are encountered.

Question: How have you all potty trained your children? Do tell!

And, just to make you cringe and laugh at the same time, here is an atrocious potty training video. Just don't show it to your kids. They might not ever be the same.