Yippee-ki-yay

Life with small children is never dull. In fact, life is always a surprise, and you never really know what type of surprise it is going to be.

Sometimes, the surprise is: Look at me! I learned how to take my diaper off and finger-paint with poop! (that is one unpleasant surprise I walked into after my 18 month old daughter woke up from nap...eugh, that was awful). Other times the surprises are like: Wow, I'm a big boy now! I learned how to climb up the ladder to the BIG slide at the park and I can now go up and slide down all by myself (yet another, more pleasant, surprise I had with my son...at the age of 13 months old (a mite scary, truth be told). He was so proud of himself).

Life is always interesting, especially with my little rugrats. Take for instance, the morning toddler rodeo. Toddler Rodeo? you say. Yes. Toddler Rodeo.

Every morning life gets extremely interesting anywhere between 6-6:45am (oh, joy, I just love early morning adventures...NOT). Chubbers wakes up with what my husband and I have come to call "monster pee-pee pants"--super soaked and fully filled wet diapers--and needs to be changed immediately (or there are...shall we say, nasty repercussions). Chubbers doesn't like to have his mega pee-pee pants changed. I don't know why he'd like to stay in them. If it were me, after a good 10+hours of marinating in my own urine, I think I'd like a fresh pair of diaper pants to, well, soil all over again. That is not the case with the boy. At least you can't say we don't get our money's worth out of the before-bed diaper.



The toddler rodeo begins with parent A or B walking into Chubber's room and saying good morning, giving him hugs, and gently telling him he has wet pants (we're trying to get that association with potty-wet pants for toileting...it may prove to be futile...) and needs to get his pee-pee diaper off. It is at this point in time that Chub defiantly (and definitely) shakes his head and protests "NO!!". Then he squirms to get down, or performs my all time favorite pose "the dead fish" (where he gets extremely heavy and limp, while simultaneously 'melting' out of my arms).

Once those tried-but-true tactics fail, he proceeds to allow us to lay him down to change him--but it is all a part of his carefully crafted master-plan of escape (too bad that the two-year-old don't realize that when you apply the same tactical strategies every morning, the unsuspecting victim (parent A or B) anticipates your moves...). He looks sweet and innocent laying there, until you start to remove the wet diaper. Then, a la salt water crocodiles from Australia, he begins performing death-rolls. It is amazing just how incredibly difficult it is to pull an angry-doesn't-want-a-diaper-change-toddler out of a death roll.



At this point in time whichever parent is changing him employs his or her own strategy to whip off the sodden (2lb. +) diaper and reposition the boy onto a clean diaper. I, personally, like the technique where I plead, pathetically, for the boy to be still followed up by getting him more or less spread-eagle and pinning his arms and legs with my legs so that I can complete my task.



Changing Chubbers in the morning is one of those tasks that I don't even attempt without at least one cup of coffee in my system. I just don't.



Now, the Rodeo wouldn't be all that awful, really, except for the fact that Chubbers has his own cheering section: The Peanut (heh, heh...like a 'Peanut Gallery'...). Peanut, likes to wander into his room as we're changing him and loves to watch her brother flip and flop around like some sort of game fish landed on 20# test line. She grins with glee while chorusing "I want to see the poop!" regardless of whether or not there is any fecal matter. I can already see visions of my sweet little girl on the playground in the future, being the one to instigate the chanting of "Fight...fight...fight" when Johnny and Isaac have a little tête à tête on the first grade playground. Lord, help me.



By the time that the monster pee-pee pants have made their way into the pee-pee bucket (the Diaper Champ) the elapsed time is approximately 10 minutes, parent A or B is thoroughly exhausted, and the boy toddles off to start his glorious, brand-new day.



Parenting; never a dull moment. Nope.