The kids have been potty trained for 9 or 10 months at this point with very few "accidents", most of which involve falling asleep during long car trips.
They have also graduated to wanting individual baths (or even the occasional shower for Max and Caroline), mostly because they've gotten big enough to crowd each other in the tub, but also because they are starting to crave solo playing time. The upside to this is that there is less fighting in the bath and less water spilling over the sides. The downside is that they still want to take 30+ minute baths, so it now takes an hour and a half to cycle them through, plus the inevitable squabbling over who gets to go first, next, and last.
They were together in the bath long enough, though, to get to the "wait a minute, there's something different about Caroline" stage. Since Grandma was a sex education teacher, we have no timidity about explaining the difference and using appropriate terms for body parts (though I'll admit I'm still partial to "buns" ... remembering when Caroline used to refer to her vagina as her "front buns" and when we explained to the kids that Daniel would be having a little surgery to fix something "in his diaper area" and he gasped and asked, "they're going to fix my buns?"... and especially since Caroline informed me that "grown ups' buns aren't cute - only babies and little kids have cute buns"), so I explained that Daniel and Max are boys, so they have penises, but Caroline is a girl, so she has a vagina.
They accepted this seemingly without question, but what seemed to stick was the word "penis". And somehow Daniel got it in his head (probably because Caroline told him) that Caroline USED to have a penis when she was a tiny baby, but that it fell off when she wanted to be a girl. And occasionally Caroline might stand up in the bath with a wash cloth strategically placed so that she could announce, "LOOK! I HAVE A PENIS!"
They slowly warmed to the term "vagina", but it's a more complex word, what with three whole syllables to deal with. Caroline is very proud that she can go to the potty BY HERSELF. One day, she ran out of the living room and plopped herself down on the potty. I was helping Max with something in the living room when she called to me a couple of minutes later.
- "Just a second sweetie, I'm doing something."
- "NO! COME NOW!"
- "Caroline? Why? You know how to go potty by yourself. Do you need me to wipe your buns?"
- "No."
- "Then do it yourself."
- "Mommy! There's no toilet paper and I have PEE PEE ON MY CHINA!"
I thought this was hysterical and relayed the story to my brother, who added a few pithy comments about how appropriate a word replacement it was - I mean china is something fancy that you only take out on special occasions. And this only made me love the story more. Over the next few weeks, I told a number of friends the story and they all burst out laughing at Caroline's "pee pee on my china".
It's an innocuous story, and we were all there when it happened, so I didn't worry about repeating it to friends when the kids were with me. Until we went over to dinner at my parents house after Thanksgiving. We were all crowded around the kitchen table (and a couple of folding tray tables) and talking, laughing, and sharing stories. About half-way through the meal, Max wanted some attention. He wanted to be the star, to make everybody laugh. And he knew this really great joke that he'd heard his mom tell a bunch of times over the last few weeks. So, completely without context and at the dinner table, he opened up in a huge grin and yelled, "PEE PEE ON MY CHINA!", causing me to have to both explain what he meant AND that we shouldn't really be telling that joke at dinner. Cue the red-faced, embarrassed Mommy! Thank goodness it was just my family!
Speaking of Max, he came home from Grandma and Papa's house the other day bragging that he'd learned how to do "standing up pee pee". Unequipped as I am for such activities, I had wondered at what point boys made that transition. Apparently, four is a good age. Max has good aim and it's a couple fewer lifts onto the potty for me each day.
Imagining what I could do with the time saved of even FEWER lifts onto the potty, I asked Daniel if he wanted to try standing up pee pee. It turns out Daniel is not as enamored of this next step as his brother. He flatly told me that he didn't want to do that, that he'd do that "when I have a beard". This, it seems, is synonymous with growing up. Uncle, Daddy, and Boppy all have different lengths of beard and they all do standing up pee pee - makes sense.
Oh, and don't tell the kids' 13-year old versions that I spent a whole internet page talking about all of this. :)
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