Milestones

Late last week another family milestone was passed with the addition of a new member to the clan!

My brother and sister-in-law who live out in the SF bay area finally gave birth to their second child... a handsome (by all accounts) little boy named Joshua Edward Bogner.  Little Joshua took almost a week (literally) to make an appearance, but everyone is (B"H) doing well and our kids are celebrating the acquisition of a new cousin!

All this talk of babies has me looking at Yonah with new eyes.  Babyhood is such a distant speck in his rear-view mirror that I can't even remember a time when he couldn't run around and throw food at the dog!

Of course, the next big milestone for him will be 'potty-training' and I'm honestly stumped as to how that's supposed to work.  You see, my lovely wife toilet trained Ariella in less than a week while I was miraculously out of the house.  And Ariella took it upon herself to potty train Gilad while we weren't looking. 

The only downside to being spared a hand in Gilad's transition from diapers to underwear was that, thanks to Ariella's tutelage, he initially learned to pee in the seated position.  Luckily after a few weeks of fairly passive instruction I was able to break him of this unmanly habit. 

So, the fact that both big kid's toilet training went off without a hitch has me worried as to how to start the process with Yonah. 

Um, wait a minute.  Did I say 'without a hitch'?  Let me rephrase that to almost without a hitch.  Now that I'm thinking about it there were one or two small bumps in the road with Ari and Gili.

I remember now that Gilad became overly confident of his peeing prowess and for a short time would turn towards anyone standing nearby and proudly hose down their pant leg and shoes in order to show that he knew how to go standing up "like a big boy"! And on another memorable occasion after being told repeatedly to stop jumping up and down on our newly reupholstered 9', hand-tied oak-framed Danish Modern couch, Gilad stared defiantly into Zahava's eyes... pulled down his pants... and peed all over the pristine fabric.

And Ari... how could I have forgotten about Ari's big 'oops'?

You see, Ariella totally 'got' the whole concept of going in the toilet and couldn't wait to do it at every opportunity.  But she had such a tiny bladder that she had trouble making it through the night.  Each morning that she woke up wet was devastating for her self-esteem and we all cast about for a way to help her succeed.  Luckily our pediatrician realized that as a musician I was coming home late at night and made a very sensible suggestion:

He said, "Since you're up anyway at 1:00AM, why not go in and gently wake Ariella up?  Just walk her into the bathroom... sit her down on the toilet... and tell her to go.  She probably won't remember getting up, but it's important that she get to the bathroom under her own steam so her body 'remembers' the act of getting out of bed to go to the bathroom."

So, a ritual evolved where every night (whether I'd come home from my gig or set my alarm for 1:00AM), I'd go in and gently wake Ari up... guide her to the bathroom... sit her down on the toilet... rub her back... and say "It's OK honey, you can go now". 

And she would. 

Not long after we'd settled into this new ritual Zahava and I were awoken a little after midnight by Ariella shrieking at the top of her lungs.  I ran into her room and found her thrashing around under her covers, apparently in the grips of a really bad nightmare.

I instinctively scooped her onto my lap... rubbed her back and softly whispered, "It's OK honey..."

The rush of warm pee onto my lap was so sudden that at first I didn't understand what was happening.  But then it hit me that I'd uttered the magic words and she had responded right on cue.

I have a vague recollection of half carrying/half marching her into the bathroom.  But by then the damage was done.

Of course Ariella has no recollection of this - and it seems that I had almost succeeded in blocking it from my own memory as well.  But now that I've successfully dredged up these highlights of Ari and Gili's adventures in toilet training I'm fairly certain that Yonah's encounter with this rite of passage will likely give birth to some wonderful new stories for this journal.

Aren't family milestones great? :-)