Well.

So, the first thing I learned today was that poop hard to see on Oriental wool carpets. (If you're easily dismayed by scatological tales, you might want to skip the rest of this story.)

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The second thing was that I need to revise my morning plans with Am a little. We're slowly gearing up for potty training, and so part of the plan is to let her try to use the potty every morning, when she wakes up.

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Sounds easy, no? Wake up, hop out of bed, take off pants & diaper, wander down the hall, try to pee, get a new diaper. I didn't see any flaws there, and it's been working fine for the last couple days. She hasn't used the potty in the morning yet, but she understands that pee is for diapers or potties.

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I guess I forgot about poo. I was tucking the diaper into the diaper genie, and I hear her say "What are you doing? WHAT ARE YOU DOING?". I look over, and she's (obviously) talking to herself, and has just crapped on the carpet.

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"Ah-ha!" I think, "A teaching moment!". I heard that phrase - teaching moment - a while ago, & I thought it was such a brilliant spin on how to deal with something running awry. (Or amuck, in this case.) It also gets cheese points. (The last phrase I was this taken with was "value-added activity".) I don't use them much, but they're there in my head.

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So, I scooped Am up - gingerly - and we go off to the bathroom, to explain about how that was pooping, and it belongs in the diaper or the potty, etc etc. She was a little dismayed, but I didn't yell - I wasn't expecting a morning poop from her, and from her tone, she sure wasn't either. She had a nice hose-down, followed by a tub rinse, then a bath.

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The third thing is that poop really, really does blend in unfortunately well with paisley carpets. Really. So I cleaned up, and cleaned up, then cleaned up, and discovered that the wool in the rug is not colorfast. Hm. Well, at least I can roll it up, drag it outside, & garden hose it all someday - when the man is around to help - because now I'm envisioning what has been spilt on it before. (It's a lovely rug - actual wool - but not new to me. The previous owners had toddlers, too.)

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The fourth thing I learned this morning is that if you wait until 10:30 to offer breakfast, Am will happily eat, with no screaming or wailing or dramatics. If I weren't starving every day by 9am, I would be more tempted to see if this would work every day. I'm also not sure if would still work without the bathtub/mess distraction, & I definitely don't want to open every day like that.

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Now it is the afternoon, and I'm waiting (with a fair amount of trepidation) to see what is wrong with the car's brakes (other than that new, awful, constant, grindy noise) and how much it's going to cost to fix. Sigh.

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UPDATED TO ADD: Well, it's the front brakes - pads & rotors (or maybe calipers - I have a terrible memory for car stuff), and they'd just started to get really dangerous, so it's good I brought them in. It'll be about $475. Sigh. Oh well. I love my automotive place - I was talking on the phone with them earlier, I'd said that I wasa little freaked out by the noise they were making - they shouldn't make any noise, really, I think - and John said "Well, come on by, I'll go for a quick drive, and we'll know what it is & if it's safe enough to book in for Friday." Thank heavens I did, & thank heavens they're working on it right now. Three cheers for Knibbe Automotive. (The man is gonemost of this week, so the concept of wrangling the toddler, the part time work & all the rest of reality with no car was a little disheartening, to say the least. Still MUCH MUCH better than a car with no brakes, & a car-accident, when the man is a 6 hour drive away. Phew.)