Over the weekend, amidst the continued stress of potty training and the cleanup of another mess, I asked Jaclyn to consider using pull-ups a little more frequently. She said that she was shying away from them because she didn’t want Miles to backslide and rely on diapers again when he had already made so much progress. My reply was, “Great, but he ISN’T potty trained yet, and maybe you’re making things harder on all of us by doing it this way.” Certain situations and times of day, I argued, would run more smoothly if we just used pull-ups, still encouraging him to use the potty, but having a failsafe in case he (or we) couldn’t get there in time.
Well Miles made his third trip to the dentist this morning, and I knew the potential for disaster was high when we were leaving the house and Jaclyn said, “When he gets to daycare, take him to the potty. And also when he gets to the dentist.”
Curious, I asked if Miles was wearing a pull-up.
“No,” Jaclyn replied. “He’s just wearing underpants.”
Great. So she hadn’t heard anything I had said the night before.
Without any time left to change into something different, but carrying an unmistakeable dread in my stomach, Miles and I headed off for the dentist. And of course just as we were pulling into the parking lot, Miles said, “Pee-pee. Pee-pee.”
“Not in here!” I replied. “Just hold on a minute, buddy!”
Well he wasn’t able to. And I took him out to find that his pants were soaked, the seat was soaked…just everything, soaked. Fortunately, I had a bag of pull-ups in the backseat to give daycare today, so I had something to change him into. Unfortunately, he had to go through his entire dentist visit with no pants, which I can’t imagine lent a greater sense of dignity to the proceedings.
Miles, of course, screamed through the entire (maybe two minute-long) teeth cleaning, and Jaclyn arrived about 20 minutes later with a clean pair of pants and some towels to use over the car seat until we could get it cleaned tonight.
Oh, and she’s on board with the whole pull-up thing now. So that’s good.
The Perils (& Pride) of Paternity 