A Toddler's Real-Time Updates from the Bathroom...

Why does my daughter at 4 1/2 years old still announce out loud in this day and age from the bathroom a declaration that she's had a BM?! I don't understand this need. It's perplexing. We've schooled her over and over that this is not necessary, however she still does it with a penchant for dedication to the process. In one sense it's impressive, and in another totally unnerving. She doesn't need Twitter; she is Twitter. She is a Twitter Megaphone walking around on two legs: a verbal tweet box that doesn't even take a breath between updates.

.....She calls out from the bathroom as if in distress. We are older and the bathroom is far away and so we never hear exactly what she is 'tweeting' about and so of course we get up to go and see what the issue is, only then to find out that it was a declaration of achievement. Yay? Okay, well that's great and all, but can you wait until you're done and come back to us in the living room to let us know of your success??

Thankfully we're done with the course on "butt wiping", but now we're onto the course entitled "unnecessary verbal declarations of very personal successes: the when and where of personal revelation and disclosure".

I assure you, there's never a dull moment. That is a rock solid and dependable certainty. Laughing and crying simultaneously is really not quite as hard nor as contradictory as it sounds. In fact, I've become quite adept at it. Primal Scream Therapy sounds good in a book, but in real life it doesn't work so well. People would look at you weird and wouldn't understand if they heard it, and so you generally have to make appointments to do that kind of thing and preferably in a remote location and/or well insulated enclosure. However,...simultaneous crying and laughing is something that other people can handle and deal with and that doesn't look like a societal aberration when out in public. ...You can see I've worked this out. I have. "Necessity is the mother…" and all that. Ha ha.

Parenting is a real joy and unparalleled in so many ways. For me, it makes life so incredibly full and that's no exaggeration. It's certainly going to make a better human being out of me; that I can clearly see.