Potty Wars

As a mother of four, I know better than many, that each child is truly different.

The newest conundrum: motivation for potty training. With my oldest two I used M&Ms. I also used "pretty big girl undies" for my oldest. My son just loved the idea of "boys can go standing up and girls can't". Yes, I know the dangers of using food to motivate, etc, but it worked. For some reason, my kids don't really eat a lot of sweets. I have had many cakes, cookies, and candy go bad in my house. I did go through a stage of thinking it was my cooking since baking is not my thing. But then I realized even at birthday parties, my kids are the ones who will say the cake is "too sweet". (I have an interesting story about how one lady heard my daughter say that and attempted to bond with me over what she assumed were our shared interest in 'all natural' holistic diets for our children. It was made particularly awkward since I had told the kids they could have McDonald's for dinner and they of course reminded me. Right.There.In.Front.Of.Her.)

So back to my two year old - I am sure when she is older the disinterest in candy will be a great joy but for now its causing a bit of frustration for me. She doesn't care about the M&Ms that she gets for using the potty. She got really excited for those two pieces of candy coated persuasion yesterday when she saw that she was getting them for using the potty, but apparently not excited enough. All day today and yesterday I kept offering it to her again, in an effort to get her to return to the potty. She looked at the candy, said, "I don't want" and went back to watching Elmo. I have an Elmo video that talks about going to the potty. She sings with him, points to the potty, but refuses to go. I explained that Elmo went potty and she took her Elmo doll and put him in the potty.

I give up. She will go when she is ready and I will have plenty of M&Ms on hand when that time comes.

Feminism

One of the more awkward issues I seem to have is when someone ask "what do you do". It feels kind of pitiful to say that I am a stay at home mom, but then I feel like I have nothing to be ashamed of because its quite an honourable thing. Then I feel ashamed of myself for feeling the need to justify it all. I find it really odd when someone introduces me to someone as a lawyer because that opens a whole other door of conversation that I don't care to go into.

So far I have taken to saying "right now I am a stay at home mom" and letting people assume. I actually get a kick out of people not knowing I have three degrees and talking to me like I am an idiot. I wait and then after they stick their foot in their mouth with some comment, I mention "well when I was in grad school" or "I had a professor in law school who said...". I love to watch them cringe.

What is it about our society that no matter how far women come, we are still seen as inferior or dumb if we stay at home with our kids? Isn't that part of the feminist movement? Having a choice? What's really interesting to me is that most of the women I know who are stay at home moms, all went to college and some beyond.

I am going to do a study or book or something on how many women stay home who have degrees or whatever. As soon as I figure out how to squeeze that in between all my other chores...

Been M.I.A.

There have been tons of storms here so I have kept the computer off quite a bit more than usual. Both the phone and the electricity have been off and on quite a few times and I have had very little time and motivation to blog or anything else. I really didn't want this to be a "vent" type of blog, but such is life I guess. I am uber tired now (I should really stop saying "uber - " but I can't think of a word that supersedes "really" right now), so I am going to bed now.