Ready or Not

"Hey momma I wanna use the potty!"

Yep that's right. The Lion cub has decided it's time to potty train.

I. Am. So. Not. Ready. For. This.

Sleep

When you become a parent, sleep is like a long lost friend. You promise to keep in touch but you never really get together. You have great memories of solid a solid night sleep. And who can forget all the times you slept until noon in college. But they are only memories.

Bunny is a pretty good sleeper so we've been very lucky. But with the advent of potty training has come a new sleep issue, waking up at all hours of the night to use the potty. "Mommy I have to use the potty" can come at any time 11:00 pm, 2:00 am, 4:00 am. And of course after its over its hard to fall back asleep.

We've also encountered another problem. If Bunny doesn't wake up in time and actually goes in her diaper, she freaks out. Diapers are not for peeing in anymore, they are only for peace of mind. If she has an "accident" she sobs uncontrollably. While this is a good sign that she is potty trained, it is a bad sign for sleeping.

We had one such accident the other night. Daddy went in to comfort her to no avail. She was still wailing after 30 minutes. So we decided to bring her into our bed. We've never really done this but we were desperate. Everyone needed sleep and this seemed like a good option. It wasn't

When she arrived in our room, she flung herself into my arms and continued to cry. She finally managed to settle down and began to fall asleep. It warmed my heart to see her peaceful, to feel her heart beating as she curled up against me. But then my arm fell asleep. When she finally rolled off of my arm, I got to look at the most perfect face in the world looking so angelic in sleep. Until the most perfect foot in the world kicked me in the ribs. Hard. Twice.

And then there was the polar bear. She started mumbling about something or other. Then she sat up, looked me straight in the eyes and asked "why aren't the polar bears in the house, momma?" Um, what? Excuse me, polar bears? Oh right, I forgot she talks in her sleep.

Well the polar bears were enough to wake her up and she started tossing and turning and poking and kicking mommy some more. So it was back to her room. "Mommy don't go. Sleep on the floor with me mommy. I'm scared of the dark." And in my sleep deprived state, I agreed. I grabbed blankets and pillows and hunkered down on the floor. Where she proceeded to toss, turn, and kick me some more. Fun.

She finally got in her bed and fell asleep. I guess I did too because I woke up two hours later with an aching back and shoulder. I crawled back to my room for another hour of fitful sleep before being greeted by the cries of "I have to go potty momma" at 6:30.

The Automatic Flushing Toilet is Evil

We started potty training Bunny during Bubs' staycation and it worked. She is basically 99.9% trained (crosses fingers, knocks wood, hops on one foot in a circle and spits). Accidents have been few and far between. She even made it through an entire week dry (overnights included). And yes I'm bragging just a little bit.

I'm glad we waited until she was ready. All in all its been awesome . . . that is until we encountered the automatic flushing toilet.

Now I know the automatic flushing toilet was invented as a convenience. It exists so that we don't have to touch the germy handles, too keep things cleaner. It just exists and I never gave it any thought. As far as I was concerned, it was a good thing. Until now.

We had a lovely day at the zoo on Saturday. It was 45 and sunny. We were enjoying it because we knew it wouldn't last, the snow was due to hit on Sunday. Trips to the zoo would stop for the year. We hit all of our favorites including the baby orangutang, Mahal, for mommy and the snakes, jellyfish and bats for Bunny.

But then we had to hit the bathroom and it was not so nice. The automatic flusher went off while Bunny was sitting on the potty and she freaked the heck out. She wouldn't go. We tried the potty at the giraffe house. No. The lion house. No! The visitor's center? No, no, no.

She took one look at the potty and made up her mind, if she didn't see a flush handle she wasn't going to go. I tried telling her that we could cover up the automatic flush so it wouldn't go off. Yeah that didn't work so well.

"No momma, I don't like these potties. No flush. I want to go home and use my potty."

You can't really argue with that logic. And I really didn't want to mess up all of her hard work becoming potty trained so we went home. She was a trooper. She made it home without an accident.

But of course you don't want to have to leave every place you are to use the potty at home. We may not be so close to home the next time. We have to solve this before it becomes a huge problem.

So I did a little research on the issue and you know whats supposed to work? Post-it notes. You just put one over the red eye on the potty and it won't flush until its removed. So simple, so easy. So now mommy is going to buy a huge stack of post-it notes and never leave home with out one.

Test Run

So we've been working up to potty training Bunny. I'm not quite sure she's ready but I've been giving it the hard sell. We've been talking about the potty and she's even picked out a pair of big girl undies. We are getting there and I hope to start within the next month or so.

Part of the training process is just going cold turkey from the diapers. Well of course that leads to lots of accidents. Accidents means lots and lots of cleaning which of course is my favorite thing to do. I've gotten some good advice from bloggers like any mommy (I may have to steal her messter map). But nothing can prepare you for the real thing, except cleaning cat pee out of your carpet and couch.

It went down like this. We had just gotten home from my parents house. Bubs and Bunny were sitting on the couch taking off her shoes when Tabasco started to spray the very couch they were sitting on. Cat pee was everywhere, the couch, the carpet but luckily not on them. Tabasco has done this before when we first brought Bunny home and we thought we had dealt with it. But apparently not.

So I sent them off to bed, cracked a beer and commenced cat pee clean up. I got out every cleanser I could find. I rubbed, I scrubbed and I sprayed the sh*t out of the couch and carpet. I had bought this product called Urine Gone which is supposed to remove all smell and stain from pet and human "accidents". I followed the directions to the letter and hoped that it worked. Because the last thing I need in this here CrapShack is to have an unusable couch. We've already been displaced from the basement, we need the living room.

I went downstairs this morning and found . . . a chemical smell. Well chemicals are better than pee so that's good. So then I sprayed the heck out of the "affected area" with Febreeze and it smells better.

Cross your fingers with me that this clean up works and the vet can help us with Tabasco's issues. Because I don't need to be cleaning up after both Bunny and Tabasco or else I might lose my ever-lovin mind (or what's left of it.)