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As I’m buckling Carlo and Noelle into the car for the trip to gymnastics, Carlo looks up at me and says, “Mommy, you happy now. Me clean. Me no poopy.”

And, yes, I was happier at that moment than 10 minutes earlier. The boy had poop from the sole of his foot to his belly — it coated both his legs and his butt and we won’t even discuss the unmentionable state of the inside of his pajamas. As a late preamble, Carlo is potty trained. In fact, he has enough control to realize he has to go and ask “Hunnerwear?”. Because if he is wearing a diaper, he’ll be lazy and not bother with the toilet. He wears underwear all day and hasn’t had an accident in a couple of weeks. This morning, I hadn’t gotten around to getting him out of the night-time diaper and PJs and he decided to take advantage of that fact. Only the diaper was no longer well attached. I was sopping wet from my shower and we had 20 minutes to go to leave for gymnastics and Carlo thought this was all just a hoot. He would not take it seriously. So, I told him I was taking away one of his lollipops. You see, I’ve been trying to transition him to the pre-school I gymnastics class where I don’t go around with him for the past 2 classes and he’s been playing the control/attention want it/don’t want it game and frustrating me to no end (no doubt his point) — Carlo knows how to go to school and attend a class. Today I descended to out and out bribery — be good at gymnastics and you get a lollipop, well, I meant for it to be a lollipop, but through a variety of circumstances it ended up as a sandwich baggy with a bunch of lollipops. That was just as well, though, because it gave me a way to take one away and still keep the gymnastics bribe in place. Well, the loss of a lollipop got his attention and the waterworks started. They continued when I brought him downstairs, popped him in the bath tub (after doing a mostly there clean-up job with wipes), and left Nicky and Noelle in there to make sure he didn’t drown while I went to change. I came back and he was playing with a fish in what must have been bacteria filled from the water and so the tears came back when I took the fish away, soaped him up, and rinsed him down with the shower head.

I don’t want to take his joy of life away from him and maybe someday the Saturday morning of poop will look funny to me, but he’s got to learn to recognize the “this is not funny” tone and words and take me seriously. And, you know what, poop smeared from belly button to sole of foot is just not all that funny.

At any rate, we were all better by gymnastics and he did *great*. The power of a bag of lollipops. I’m not saying he was a perfect little angel, but he was age appropriate and not doing his whiny want it/don’t want it act. He went around and listened for the most part. Our challenge of next week is to get Noelle back into her own class, because as an attempt to get Carlo to go with his class last week, Noelle joined. Wish me luck, she’s decided she likes his class better.

We swung by Home Depot for some lightbulbs and art supplies and it was home to 1/2 of Lady and the Tramp, fruit, luncheon meats, cheese and crackers. Then the little kids and I all took a nap. When we all woke up, I took us all to the Grounds for Sculpture. Noelle screamed and cried because she didn’t want to go, I wasn’t going to bring a stroller and her “legs would hurt”.

We all had a blast. We were there for over an hour and a half. Everyone walked (the kids ran around like crazy people). No tears. No one was upset. Everyone behaved ad listened. Everyone ran off some energy.

Easter tomorrow! Its Carlo’s last first holidy home with us, can you believe it!?!?!

We had a visit from both the Easter Bunny and the tooth fairy tonight.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 22nd, 2008 at 10:11 pm and is filed under Family, Noelle, Nicky, My Valley Of Love and Delight, Carlo. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.