Adventures With Absorbent Pants

Last week, I bought Gracie a bag full of Pampers First Steps Absorbent Pants. Absorbent Pants??? To me that sounds like Depends for Toddlers, but hey, I'm a slave to mass marketing and the commercial promised that these pants are for: "On-the-go toddlers who are too busy exploring to stop and lie down for a diaper change. First Steps helps make standing changes easy so that your toddler can spend more time on his feet-and less time on the changing table. First Steps starts your toddler on the path from diapers to underwear. Your child can even help by pulling on First Steps part of the way". This sounded like the Nirvana of diapers to me. Of course, I also thought New Coke would be a good thing, too.

Changing Gracie's diaper has become some kind of comedic nightmare, something that could be turned into a Lifetime Movie called "Revenge of the 22-legged Baby" or a Baby Einstein Video called "Baby Maniac - One Simple Way To Make Your Mommy Sweat and Curse". I've tried singing to her, telling her stories, letting her play with toys while I change her. I've even resorted on more than one occasion to bribing her with cookies, all to no avail. Putting Gracie on the changing table turns her into a squirming lunatic and me into a red-faced one. Most times, I manage to get a fresh diaper on her that covers up at least a little of her bottom, but I usually do it with her standing on her head or with the majority of her body hanging off of the changing table. The Absorbent Pants sound like a good idea. And, so far, they are. Except at night, but that's another entry, one for a time when I feel like writing about husbands who don't listen to their wives when their wives tell them that absorbent pants aren't meant to hold all of Gracie's nocturnal bathroom breaks.

So, changing Gracie from one pair of Sesame Street decorated Absorbent Pants to another is definitely easier than wrestling a regular diaper off of and on to her. Score one for the First Steps commercial. But, it’s got me thinking. Gracie is almost 17 months old and I know that lurking just around the corner is that next big adventure in Toddler World: Potty Training. This little foray that we’ve made into potty training camp with the First Steps has for me lack of a better word, terrified. Training has never really been my talent. My dog is eight and I haven’t trained her to sit yet – she’s trained me to give her a treat just for looking cute. I tried strength training at the gym and all I ended up with were sore muscles and a conviction that I didn’t want to train my strength. How am I supposed to train Gracie to switch from diapers to using a potty? Of course, there are all kinds of tools out there to help me train her: Videos for me, videos for her, books for both of us, little kid potties shaped like fish or princess thrones, pull-ups that change colors when they’re wet or ones that have some strip in them that lets them feel the wetness (okay, yuck!). I’m sure even armed with all of these products guaranteed to make her transition into the wonderful world of big girl bathrooms completely stress free, I will fail at being the potty trainer. Here’s how I picture Gracie's potty training going with me:

Mommy, age 38, silently wondering if the proceeds from an equity loan can be used to pay for pull-ups
“Okay, Gracie sit on this pretty little potty and read your book and try and go peepee for Mommy”
Gracie, age 4, grinning impishly
“Aww Mommy, let’s go do something funner. Like playing outside or coloring on the walls.”
Mommy, smiling
“Okay, Gracie. We’ll just try again later – tomorrow sounds good.”
Did I mention that procrastination and training go hand in hand for me?

Steve, on the other hand, probably doesn’t have any of these worries about potty training. He was in the Army and somehow, wherever he goes, the nickname “Drill Sergeant” gets stuck to him. Training people and getting them in line is like a hobby for him. Still, I’m not sure this will work with Gracie. Here’s how I picture that routine going:

Gracie, age 4, sitting on the toilet
“Daddy, I’m NOT going to the potty. You can’t make me.”
Steve, age 37 and aging by the minute:
“Grace AnnMarie, we are not going anywhere until you use the bathroom. You are going to finish potty training if it kills us.”
Gracie, looking up at her daddy, lower lip trembling, tears threatening to pour down her cheeks
“But, Daddy”, voice trembling, “I just don’t really think I can”
Steve
“It’s okay baby. You don’t have to. Pull up your pull-up and let’s go get a cookie.”

Truthfully, I think potty training, for all the work that its name implies, will be like every other victory that Gracie has accomplished in her life. They don’t call learning to walk, Walk Training or learning to breastfeed Boobie Training. Everything she’s done from birth forward has been trial and error with a little bit of guidance from mommy and daddy and a lot of missteps and accidents along the way. I’m reasonably certain that potty training in my house will happen when Gracie decides one day that she’s tired of diapers and that she’s going to train her parents to help her get out of them. In the meantime, I’ll be using up that bag of Absorbent Pants and enjoying, at least for a while longer, the fact that she’s still enough of a baby to wear diapers. Hopefully she'll be out of them before I need absorbent pants for grownups....