My baby is currently standing on the table precariously holding a bowl of cereal that is almost as big as he. I don’t know where he would go with it or why he got off his chair and clambered up on top of the table to laboriously bend over his small plump toddler self, but he did. Although, of course, one of my girls rescued him and the cereal, not in that order. So the impending crisis was averted.

But, it made me think about my things.

Because I get messages in my inbox about potty training and children who cry loudly and children who sit in little homeless cardboard boxes and cry and then laugh. And the top question is always, are these sheep that I accidentally made and love even normal?

I get it, ok? I have heard so many words coming out of my mouth that I would never have thought a mother would say, like “please don’t lick your sister’s underarm,” or “take your foot out of his mouth,” and please get your hands out of your pants,” and “honey you can’t go around mooning people.” (flummoxed)

Yes, mooning them on purpose. And not the child you would expect such things from. No, I am talking about the little village priest who grew up to be a mooning little somebody. Don’t worry, Mama be handling her bidness, but all this to say, I no longer wonder if my shippies are normal. I just go with it, recognizing that Normal is only a setting on the dryer.

Last night someone asked me what was going on with her child; she is potty training that is slowly un-potty-training herself after 6 months of success. “It’s normal,” I said. “mine always do that,” sez I. As if mine doing that as well makes it normal. Of course, it doesn’t. But it makes it feel normal. The subtle propaganda of dribbled undies.

I bought training undies for my smallest son, who is turning two soon. I ordered two packs because of a post a friend had shared of her two-year-old hanging up tiny little panties on a mini wash line at her height, and there were so many! I was helplessly influenced by the small row of pink and purple underwear. The subtle propaganda of the dribbled undies. Am I right?

Yes, I am right.

Potty training is the one job that never ceases to flummox me no matter how often I do it. How to teach a child to engage and disengage the peeing and pooping muscles. It’s such an intangible mystery. So I sit on the bathroom floor and use toilet paper to vigorously blow my nose as I prepare to once again bravely exercise my potty training muscles.

I have never been the mom that sets the child on a little potty chair and hands them an iPad to keep them company. I am the mom that is too practical to use a mini potty chair. I crouch before the child and hold them as they perch on the potty. Silently we wait. The posture and the silence come together and create the magic formula that releases the bladder muscles.

I tense as I hear the dribble start… “please, please, please, Jesus.” I pray silently.

And then afterward…. the celebration: lights, action, fireworks, screaming and laughing, and dancing around with the successful baby in my arms. I now have hope for the sister. Myself.

It’s all about me, right?

No, it is not. It’s all about this child who will not get married in a diaper.

I have once again successfully potty trained, only in theory, of course. I have certainly not potty trained my youngest child. He is still happily wearing diapers and tells me when he needs a change. “Diapa” he says firmly, pointing at his sagging nether regions. It’s getting spendy because he likes his diapa changed before I have rung out every bit of my dollars worth out of it.

My sister told me about how she was visiting a mother. A mother from the same stockpot I came from. “I think he needs a diaper change.” said sis. The other mother responded, “Usually it lasts him to lunchtime, and it tweren’t lunchtime yet. It was like 11 am. She was confident it could handle another good wet.

Anabaptist diaper rules aren’t the same as englisher diaper rules. Our diapers last longer and work harder than your diapers do. The diaper is not used up until it splats when dropped.

I kid, of course. But, although it’s possible, I say “I kid” only to dissuade the masses of keyboard warriors that care about this sort of thing.

Can you imagine my disbelief upon hearing that diapers actually have a little sign that it is time to change them? A line going down the front that turns blue. I thought it was a joke until I realized it wasn’t.

Who on earth uses the line as a sign to change diapers instead of the heft test? The heft test is similar to the heft test nursing Moms do when trying to figure out which side they led out in nursing the last time. So we do a subtle heft test. First one boob, then the other.

Heft.

Heft.

Ah hah, the left side is loaded and ready to go. But unfortunately, the right side is still reeling.

The diaper heft test is similar. One hand on the front of the diaper and a gentle heft. If it’s crunchy, it still has hours of pee collecting left. If it’s a solid handful: the diaper will make it to lunch. But when it’s bloated and somewhere close to the knees, we sling the baby across our lap, face down, and with the speed of light, divest them of the turgid diaper and throw a fresh one on before releasing the toddler back to merge with the other toddler traffic. 

Yes, I change diapers face down. I even did a tutorial on it at the request of some mothers. However, upon seeing the video, several said they could not understand how it would work.

I scratched my head.

I explained the concept and posted a tutorial video, but they couldn’t see how it would work.

Hmmmmmm, like Motz would say, “k.”

It’s human nature to assume my intelligence is only as high as your intelligence. Likewise, it is human nature to want to discredit someone else’s mode of conduct or theories when we cannot figure it out for ourselves.

However, the fountain of youth is not found when you are driven by every whim of your emotions, tossed, limiting yourself because of your emotional IQ. You can become brilliantly clever when you realize many people are far more intelligent than you. Many, many people! Rather than being in competition, learn from them.

The competition will tear you and your confidence to shreds. There will always be someone taller, smaller, shorter, skinnier, prettier, with more perky boobs, a better butt, a smoother face, better hair…… You get the picture. It’s useless to compete.

Develop your brain if you want to be strong, confident, and sexy for your husband. It is, after all, the epicenter of sexiness.

Yesterday I told my husband, “I have decided there seem to be two kinds of men. On the one hand, you have the men who go only for a perfectly smooth face, perfect body, perfect hair, everything perfect on the outside, and being bratty, expensive, immature, and dramatic are not seen as problems. 

Or there are the men like him; nothing causes them to give their wife a heated glance so quickly as when they see her be strong, capable, tough, emotionally mature, and willing to go far out of their comfort zone to learn something new. 

My husband has told me often that I am his little workhorse. This, of course, is from a man who farmed with horses, so he gets it. I am a little standardbred horse hitched alongside a Percheron, and “baby, your size doesn’t limit how you lean into the harness and pull your heart out.” He sez. This is the kind of compliment that makes me glow. Telling me, I am beautiful means almost nothing to me. My face is the one God gave me. I have very little to do with it. Tell me I am intelligent and capable, and I will glow so brightly that he is a little bit blinded.  

The same goes for women. Some of us go for the gym bods and the pearly white smile. 

Others go for the callouses on the hand and the hard glint of strength and integrity in the eye. 

(some of us have it all in one excellent package) wink wink. 

(Ladies: Not that there is anything wrong with a gym, just don’t get yo heads twisted into a knot if your man doesn’t have a gym buff bod.)

Jordon Peterson says if women actually believed in eradicating the patriarchy and their feminist viewpoints, they would marry down. Instead, they would go for weak men, easily controlled and manipulated men. But we are not doing that. Instead, the evolution of femininity as God built it inside us continues to seek to marry up helplessly.

 We want a man we cannot control. 

We want a man that is unafraid in the face of danger. 

We want the real men who are willing to die for their families.

Oh, crunch, the bottom of the page is here, and somehow I went from potty-training to the patriarchy.

Perhaps I shall leave you with that thought brewing around in your head, sloshing about as you think about your choices. Then, next week you can be assured that I shall finish what I started with a good hard look at what men and women really need. So if you are the person who always messages me with a caveat on why what I said does not work, get your typing fingers ready cause you gonna need them.

That’s all, folks.