The potty and what goes on in there

S is working on getting out of diapers. She is doing very well at peeing in the potty. After a string of accidents, her solution to pooping is apparently not to. We are on day three of no moving bowels.

This is making me very anxious. In an 'expect it when you least expect it' kind of way. I'm afraid to leave the house. I am also concerned for S's well being. It doesn't seem to be bothering her at all, but really, how long can one be backed up? Last night I touched her belly (which is looking larger than usual) and I said "That poop needs to come out!" Well, what, was I born yesterday? This alarmed S a great deal. "There's POOP in my belly?!" No.. no, just food in your belly, I assured her. "What else?" She asked, about 10 times. Not the time to bring up what happens to the food we eat.

H is no help with announcements like "All that we eat turns to poop." I've asked her to keep these observations to herself until S has mastered the potty. With my luck, and how S is wired, she'd stop eating, too.

I didn't think to ask H to not talk about germs, however, and this is becoming an issue. At a restroom in a restaurant with their father a few days ago, H apparently went on (and on) about not touching anything that there were germs everywhere. Now,this is true, and there are plenty a public restroom that gives me the heebie jeebies- but when you got to go, you got to go, especially when you are just learning how to go. J put the exclamation on the germ observation by using one of those paper toilet covers. After that day, at a restroom at a playground (which was quite clean) S looked at the toilet as if it had ants crawling all over it, and refused to sit on it. "Where the paper thing?" she asked.

I am quite possibly the only mother in the universe who tells her kid in a public restroom, with a shrug of the shoulders, "Eh? Germs? There are no germs here." Then, because I can't stand to lie so blatantly, contradict myself with "That's why we wash hands."

The lying continues at home, S says while sitting on the potty,
"no germs at home."
"Nope", I say. "No germs at home."
"Where did they go?"
"Home."
"Where?
I resist saying "GERMany". No need to alienate an entire country in her mind for the purpose of my amusement. Instead I say "Germ-land"

S isn't convinced. But she deals. She is on the potty wearing her kitty costume.
"Hold my tail" she says. "don't want any germs on it"