Dr. Cheerleader and Tale of the Parking Lot Labyrinth

I haven't been particularly bloggy of late. Between work, and Sprocket, I'm getting a little over-blogged and things at home have been more than a little hectic and when I feel like I have time to write, I don't, because I'm either asleep, or in bed nearly asleep, or out of bed and awake, but exhausted and muse-less.

And it's not that there's nothing to write about. Sometimes it's worse when there's TOO much to write about. The potty training blog is sitting there "in draft form" (which means, I've written "Potty Training" as a title, and nothing else so that it reminds me that I promised to write a blog about potty training) but the whole experience was so big and detailed and full of woe that I just haven't been able to get my brain around the idea of putting it all on 'paper'.

Something that happened shortly after the last visit to the doctor, is that we visited a psychiatrist about getting a non-stimulant for Lily's impulsivity. The stimulant experiment (another 'draft') was such a failure that I think we needed at least a year to let life wash the bad taste out of our mouths before considering it again. We visited our magical autism doctor, and I previously blogged THAT little encounter as sort of a venting thing, and the overwhelming response was that we should pack our bags and find a new doctor. But we're not doing that.

So anyway, during that visit, we mentioned to Dr. Autism that we were going to see another doc about prescriptions and he got mildly butthurt that we hadn't come to him but then made some elaborate "fine, go see her, I don't even have TIME to talk to you about prescriptions so it's awesome that you're cheating on me seeing someone else for that. It's better. I WANT you to go. And I sorta felt bad for Dr. Autism, like he felt like we were totally going to date the cheerleader even though he was the plain girl who played drums but was providing us moral support all along, and probably he was screaming in his head, "John Hughes movies don't end this way!! You're supposed to end up with the supportive girl after you verbally burn and dump the cheerleader for being so vapid!!"

But that was the frame of mind I was in during that visit. So we went to see the other doctor. The appointment was at 4:00 I think. Or maybe it was some other time, but it's irrelevant because I could just pick some arbitrary time and tell the story around it and how would you guys know?? So it was 4:00. I mean it.

Leslie had mentioned Risperdal and Dr. Autism had gotten a little concerned and said. . . "Risperdal is a big gun. I don't think Lily needs that big a gun. If I were prescribing something (insert imagined sniffle) it would probably be Tenex." I had that in the back of my mind as we went to see Dr. Cheerleader.

Dr. Cheerleader's office was in this medical complex on Pittsburgh's Northside. Or near a medical complex. It was somewhat unclear exactly where Dr. Cheerleader's office was, but I plugged the address into my phone and listened to the GPS tell me where to go. I zoomed right into the parking garage with about 10 minutes to spare and took the escalator up to the main floor to find the office.

I eased into my parking spot and took the escalator up into what had once been sort of a fancy little inside mall.  I walked past locked doors and empty spaces looking for promising. . . medical complexy type offices but didn't find any.  

I doubled back the way I'd come and started over. This time I spotted a girl cleaning up in front of a coffee shop and I asked for directions. She had no idea. I did a few more laps of the building, starting to get stressed out and maybe a little brow-sweaty. I walked back into the courtyard outside the mall and found what looked like a security guard. Surely if anyone knew where to look it would be him, but he just said, he had no idea and pointed to the bank saying, "They probably know in the bank." Yeah. Cause that's what banks do.

The whole complex was under construction. So even following the bank employee's directions of, essentially "thataway", I ran into fenced off construction and had to go inside the mall to get around it. My feet had blisters the size of quarters and I was more or less limping everywhere I went. 

The "Cruel Shoes"  Apologies to Steve Martin

Time for a brief sidebar: I went shopping at DSW because I needed new dress shoes. My old ones were worn out and I wanted a pair that were a little more current. So after about a half hour i found a pair I liked, and were $75 each.

One aisle over I found a similar pair and checked the price. $50! Sweet. From there it was like this weird sort of reverse "Let's Make a Deal" with me exchanging the pairs of shoes I'd found for new ones that cost less as I progressed through the store. I threw caution to the wind and finally headed to the clearance rack. Two pairs of shoes, $35 each! With the money I saved I bought a pair of casual shoes too.

The dress shoes I bought were cheap. And I don't mean "inexpensive". They LOOKED nice, but 1) The insole kept coming unglued and sliding toward the toe so that I was always walking on a wrinkle of leather and would have to take the shoe off, reach in and smooth it out. 2) They hurt my feet. In fact, it is JUST now occurring to me that the foot pain I've been suffering for the past several months probably has nothing to do with imagined plantar fasciitis and everything to do with the fact that my feet kill me after I wear these stupid shoes all day, and 3) they smelled of cheap rubber. The first month I wore them I'd have to take them off in my office and walk out because the fumes gave me headaches. My boss told me to put them in kitty litter because the activated carbon in the kitty litter would adsorb the cheap rubber fumes. And I did it.

It's not a huge stretch to say I'd just walked two miles in those stupid cheap shoes. I called Leslie, but she was already in the exam with Dr. Cheerleader and said, "I can't talk now, bye!" and hung up. I texted her a terse message indicating I had no idea where I was but that I'd be there if I ever found out.

Eventually I just got frustrated and started walking North up the sidewalk. And there it was.

I had parked in the wrong garage. And not just sorta wrong, really wrong. I was late, and sweaty (it was hot outside) my feet hurt and I was stressed out and frustrated that I missed the start of the appointment. But I was there. Leslie hadn't been able to talk to me because the doctor was working with Lily and Leslie was in the office with them and didn't want to screw it up.

Also. . . to be clear, Dr. Cheerleader doesn't really look like a cheerleader, and there's no "popular" vs. "nerdy" vibe, and I'm starting to regret bringing my whole reimagined "Say Anything" storyline into it, but Dr. Cheerleader works as a nickname for the story since I'm not offering up real names, so we're just going with it.

We talked about Lily and answered questions for 15 or 20 more minutes and Dr. Cheerleader made her recommendation.

Tenex.

So we could have stuck with the plain drummer girl with the bad haircut after all! Not really, but it was actually nice to have a built in second opinion completely independent of the first. She, like Dr. Autism, felt that Lily just needed to take the edge off some of her impulsivity, calm the tooth-grinding and hand-wringing, possibly keep her from feeling the need to pick at her fingers. . . we shall see.

Because Dr. Autism had given Lily four new supplements to incorporate, and because we wanted to first see what the Tenex would do, we agreed to start the medication very slowly and ramp it up and let her get used to it before doing anything with the supplements. We agreed to meet again, and we ended the appointment, I limped Leslie and Lily to the minivan (which was parked about 50 yards from the door) before heading back to my car which was parked in the next county.

When I reached my car is when I noticed the signs that said, "Cash Only Upon Exit" and "Exit via Gate C". I had no cash. I had no idea where Gate C was. I decided to drive around the garage looking for the exit but inexplicably could not find it. After going back and forth about five times I parked the car and took a service stairway up to the mall where at least I knew I could find an ATM for cash.

I got money out then couldn't find the stairway I'd taken to get up in the first place, so I just picked a stairway at random and walked around the garage holding my car remote in front of me like a dowsing rod, pushing the "lock" button and hoping to hear my car's beep in response. But I never did, and ultimately found the car around the corner from the service stairway without TOO much more difficulty.

It probably took me 30 minutes to get out of the parking garage. I was sooooo pissed by the time I left. It was a bad brain day the summary of which is essentially, late to an appointment because I got lost. . . then got lost trying to leave the appointment. It was like the doctor's office was the Sargasso Sea and the parking garage was the Bermuda Triangle.

That was two or three weeks ago. Which brings us to today. I don't know how much the Tenex has impacted Lily. She HAS been less impulsive while still maintaining her happy and energetic personality (unlike the changes that killed us when we tried the stimulants) so I suppose if nothing else it's been a much better fit for her than stimulants EVER were.

And returning briefly to the subject of potty training. . . she's down to about one accident per day. . . many days NO accidents. Is that the potty training we utterly failed somehow taking root? It was better even before the Tenex, but now, when she wakes in the middle of the night, she calls us, and often she's still dry. We put her on the potty, she goes, then we put her to bed and she goes back to sleep. All of that is good good good.

I'm not saying she's completely potty trained, but she's really close (for no apparent reason other than she's doing better).

Her behaviors are way down too. She grinds her teeth a little, but I cannot even tell you the last time she spit. She's happy. She doesn't resist as much when we transition or offer to take her to the bathroom.

Part of the reason I suppose I haven't really been putting much of this down on 'paper' is because things with Lily have been. . . good. . . boringly good. There really haven't been too many stories to tell. And there have been, of course, but with everything ELSE going on, I just haven't made time to tell them.

I've been meaning to mention the ridiculousness of the visit with Dr. Cheerleader for weeks now. Anyway, in the midst of all the autistic kids dealing with tough transitions from structured school work to completely unstructured summer chaos. . . Lily's just been steady as the northern star.

She starts ESY next week, and we've mentally prepared ourselves for some backsliding, but it's really been sweet and stress-less (to an extent) and nice here, at least where little Lily is concerned.

On the Road

While I'm away on business (ie, alone in a hotel room with free wifi and my laptop), I figured I'd catch up on a few bloggable family items.


Lily and I went to her first "real" dentist appointment last week.  It wasn't her first real appointment, that was almost a year ago, but it was her first "real" appointment.  Allow me to explain.  The FIRST appointment Lily had the lady put her fingers in Lily's mouth and then she extracted the pieces of the fingers that were left and the examination was essentially over.  Lily was a mess.  She was being restrained by Leslie and I, she was crying and gagging and sad and afraid, and . . . it sucked.  And I really didn't leave the appointment with any sort of warm-fuzzy feeling regarding what they could possibly have observed in the ten seconds it took for Lily to bite the fingers off the hands of the hygienist.


So we got a referral.  The new dentist was officially a pediatric dentist who was very experienced with special needs patients.  And you know what?  I think he really was.  Lily was no less upset.  Well. . . maybe a little less upset, but he handled it like a pro.  He probably OVER explained the things he was doing, talking calmly and soothingly to her, showing her the tools he was using and explaining their purposes.  The assistant held Lily's hands away from her mouth and from the dentist, but didn't straight-jacket her or anything, just kept the dentist out of harm's way.  And Lily tried to bite off his fingers too. . . he just had a knack for keeping his fingers in places where Lily's teeth weren't.


So Lily has no cavities.  As we left the appointment I asked the doctor about loose teeth.


"Did you notice if she had any loose teeth?" I asked.


"You know, I didn't," he replied frankly.


"Oh.  Well she just lost her first tooth a couple months ago," I told him.


"Well, first teeth usually come out within six months of each other."


And I we bid him farewell.


A week later Lily lost her second tooth.  THIS time we got it.  She lost it at school and they packed the little chicklet up and sent it home to us where we. . . er. . .the toothfairy can store it with all the other collected teeth.


She got a $5 bill under her pillow as payment.  Must have been some SWEET ivory in that bad boy.


Meanwhile, Emma, who had been pining for a chance to pitch her first game of the softball season, finally got her chance last Friday.


In order to understand how well she did you must first understand math.  There are six innings in a 10U (age 10 and under) softball game.  Each inning has three outs.  That's 18 total outs for an entire game.


Caught up?  Okay.  Emma struck out 15 kids.  That's three total outs that the infielders had to make in order to end the game.  Except that one of the three Emma fielded and threw to third, to get another out.  16 out of the 18 outs for an entire game were from Emma.  Does it sound like I'm bragging her up?  I totally am, so I hope it sounds that way, otherwise it's just bad writing.


To be fair the team she played just could not hit.  But. . . also to be fair, she was throwing right where she needed to be throwing.  Almost every pitch.  It was great for her.  She got the game ball.  It would have been tough to give it to anyone else.  They won 13 - 1.


I still owe you a potty training blog.  To be honest, I sorta don't want to jinx things.  Meh. . . screw it.  The potty training was more or less a failure.  But SINCE the potty training her accidents have gone WAY down.


She used to average anywhere from 3 - 5 accidents a day.  Now we're closer to 1 or 2.  This past weekend she was dry the whole time.  Not one accident.  A couple days before that she went two days without an accident.  So potty accidents have been WAY down.  And for no real reason, since it was VERY apparent that the potty training itself, at least in the heat of the moment, was a bust.

Lily and Emma relaxing. . . 

I'll still be updating everyone on fund raising.  I'm just SO amazed at the response, it would be hard for me to stop gushing about it.  We've had a couple hundred more dollars pledged since the last update a couple days ago. . .


I'm in Orlando tonight and I miss my family, but at least it's an excuse to catch up on the blog a little.

Experience and Adaptation

Okay, experience teaches that there's a "right" way and a "wrong" way to mount a toilet paper roll on the spool.  The right way is, of course, configured such that the paper lies over the top, not behind the roll.  It just is.  I've seen the pros and cons in ridiculous detail, but over the top is "correct."  70% of those polled (on some apocryphal internet site I read) agree and if I've learned nothing else in my 42 years, it is that if 70% of the people polled think it's so. . . who am I to argue with those geniuses?


It bothers me that my wife seems to hang the toilet paper indiscriminately, like it somehow doesn't matter; like it's somehow not the huge deal that it so totally is.  When I do happen to spy the roll incorrectly mounted, I change it without comment, however, because when I do bitch about it, she says things like, "If you'd have bothered to put the new roll on yourself when you finished the old roll I wouldn't have had to put the new roll on incorrectly!" which just distracts from the point, (which is that she's doing it wrong) and redirects it to something irrelevant (that at least someone is doing it).


Despite knowing the "right" way to mount the rolls, Lily receives an 'adapted' roll.  It's not in her IEP or anything, but like other adaptations and therapies we've implemented for Lily, it allows us to give her some amount of privacy while she sits on the potty while simultaneously preventing this:

From turning into. . .

This:  

Because you can't do that if you roll it from underneath.  

Experience is the best teacher.

Weekend Update

I don't love Thanksgiving.  For starters, I don't love turkey, and I'm pretty tight-lipped with my emotional from-the-heart givings of thanks, so an uncomfortable holiday centered around a meal I'm only lukewarm about. . . it's nothing I want to devote a lot of time and attention to with a few exceptions:

Sorry about your car, but at least the McRib is back!

1)  Sometime on Tuesday evening, a tanker truck carrying black driveway sealant spilled its contents across a 39 mile stretch of the Pennsylvania Turnpike.  I was watching the news on Wednesday morning, mouth agape, as I saw pictures of what it did to people's cars.  When I left for work that morning, they said at least two hundred cars had been affected.  Most, if not all, were traveling to some Thanksgiving destination, and had to stop.  What a monumental fuck up.  The Turnpike authority blamed the trucking company.  I'm sure the trucking company will blame whoever loaded the sealant.  I'm sure they'll all look for insurance to cover it, and, as I watched, i couldn't help thinking. . . all those people are stuck paying for ALL of it, until the dust settles.  Nightmare.


2)  Mississippi cousins visited, and it was really nice to see them again.  My recently wedded sister-in-law and her husband came down, and it was also great.  Some highlights:  visited downtown, ate out, ice skated, roller skated, had Thanksgiving. . . some lowlights. . . lots of people, lots of activity and autism, not a super mix.  Honestly though, up until about 8 o'clock at night on Thanksgiving, Lily did great.  She started to spin a little out of control as the evening went on, and she has a tendency to kick my in-law's dog (okay, not so much tendency as uncontrollable need) but all in all she was very good.  The iPad, and all the one-on-one attention from her cousins and aunts and grandparents really helped.


3)  Lily has been using some really great appropriate language lately.  Her potty training seems to have stumbled a bit lately, but her special ed teacher offered that sometimes when her kiddos see a change in expectation/priority (we had prioritized potty training before Lily started Kindergarten in the Fall) they see some great advancement in the new priorities at the expense of some of the old ones.  She feels like Lily is doing a great job in class, but has seen a drop off in her toileting.  That's sort of a wash, I suppose.  Some of the things she's been saying:


Emma and Lily:
"Are you okay, Emma?"
"Yeah, I'm okay, Lily.  Are you okay?"
"Yeah, I'm okay."


The next few have been going on more frequently since we started playing with her AutismXpress app.  it has 12 faces on it, each describing a feeling.  She pushes the button and they get big and make a sound and animation associated with that emotion.  She perseverates over it.


Me to Lily:
"Lily, are you happy or sad?"
"I don't know, Daddy."

Emma, look at me.  Are you happy or sad?

Emma and Lily:
"Emma, look at me, are you happy or sad?"
"I'm happy, Lily!"
"Oh that's good, you're happy!"


"Emma, are you happy or sad?"
*silence from Emma"
"Answer the question!"

We hosted guests at our house, so I had an inflatable Queen size mattress in the basement.  I decided to let Lily and Emma loose on it before I deflated it and put it away.  It was such a hit, I'm not sure I'll EVER put it away.


"Daddy, it looks like fun!" followed by "Daddy, you want a turn?"


Lily drools, especially when she gets stimmy. . . or spitty, since her stims often involve her blowing raspberries.  But she'll wipe her mouth off if prompted.


"Lily, can you wipe your mouth please?"
"Oh, I'd be happy to."


And finally, her sister left to go upstairs to tell her mother something before returning.


"I want Emma."
"Well, you're in luck.  Guess who's back?"
"Oh, Emma!  Emma came back!"


It was all very cute.  Then she peed her pants.  Not really.  But it brings the whole appropriate speech vs. potty training theme I was going with full circle, so it makes my point seem more cogent if I say that.


4)  We got two trees up.  One is full decorated and the other is lit, but undecorated.  Within 10 minutes of being introduced to the newly decorated tree, Lily had three ornaments on the floor.  After "parenting" that frequency dropped down significantly.  Distraction, timeouts, trips to the aforementioned inflatable bouncy mattress-o-fun in the basement. . . whatever it takes.  Only four more weeks. . .


There was other stuff, some of it awesome, some not so awesome.  It was a very busy weekend.

Potty Training With Edgar Allen Poe

http://www.fanpop.com/spots/edgar-allan-poe/images/12042270/title/eap-photo

I always hate myself when I write blogs in other software then post them and try to adjust all the formatting problems that crop up as a result. So. . . I just won't fix any of them.

I have recently read several potty training blogs.  The following account represents my experience with our first attempt at potty training Lily.  Possibly it is dramatized, but I hold that it is mostly factual and can be instructive to the extent that you may want to NOT do it this way having read the account.  I may revisit the process since it seems like such a sticky one for parents of autistic children, and this was only the first concerted effort that didn’t consist of the. . . “she’ll go when she’s ready” formula that our pediatrician at the time “prescribed”.  We have since tried others. . . 

-------------------------------------------------------------------

It was a "vacation" week for me. The nuns that ran Lily’s daycare apparently needed a week of rest from the supervision of our angels every year around that time, and my wife was out of vacation time. Actually the staff had already gotten their vacation, but they also scheduled the facility to be painted and remodeled, fixed and refinished that week every year so that the daycare sparkled and Jesus smiled upon it.

A week off with the kids actually could be considered enjoyable, so we attempted to do what we could in order to make certain that it was not. Because you cannot be a martyr without having suffered.  And we loooooove to play martyr.  We decided to attempt to hardcore potty train little Lily while I was off with the kids.

There are many ways to potty train kids. . . my preferred method would be "wait until they just sorta pick it up" because it requires no effort.  This method almost never fails, but takes a lot longer.  But Lily is not a no-effort child, and her a lot longer is longer than a lot of other lot longers. With other learning priorities to deal with, potty training was on the low end of her therapeutic services, so it seemed likely to go unaddressed unless we prioritized it.

The method we ended up going with was this: underpants underneath her pull-ups, with an egg timer to get her on the potty frequently and regularly. Ding! Time to potty. Ding! Time to potty.  Simple.

The plan’s details were worked up by Lily’s BSC and went something like this. . .  At 30 minute intervals, you take your child to the potty. If she's dry and she goes to the bathroom. . . you bump the interval to 45 minutes. If she's not, you change her and continue as before. You're "done" when she's dry at 2 hour intervals, essentially, though there's more to it than that, since you really need them to realize for themselves that they need to go and to prompt you to put them on the potty, or better still, they visit the potty by themselves and leave you to your "Stories".

Armed with my strawberry-shaped egg timer, I set the 30 minute interval and waited. Ding! Time to potty. She sat but wasn't happy about it. Was she dry, was she wet? I don't remember. . . that was sooooo long ago. I got her off the potty and went back to my day, making breakfasts and/or cleaning dishes. Retrieving stuffed animals or fixing the internet for my older daughter, Emma. Ding! Time to potty. Dry/wet. . . again. . . so long ago, but I think we were 0 for 2. . . two potty attempts, two pairs of underpants. . . we bought seven, all of which were slightly too big because it was sort of last minute, and the smallest we could find were "4" and she needed "3". We had a helper (TSS) for the morning, someone to assist with her day-to-day activities in an effort to get her back on track. This proved to be uncomfortable for most of the day, as I essentially still did all the same shit I usually do with the kids, but had someone there to "help" who felt equally uncomfortable being there, because he didn't really know me, but had to be there all morning essentially doing nothing but watching me.

Ding! Time to potty. Day 1 met with mixed success. Sometimes dry, sometimes, wet. We passed the day to the rhythm of the dinging strawberry. The dings seemed to come more and more quickly the longer the day dragged on. Her helper left around noon, and I fed her and put her to bed in a pull-up (not underpants) for her afternoon nap (cause I'm not a fucking (excuse my French) moron) and spent a little quality time with the older child.

Lily didn't sleep though. . . so an hour later I retrieved her from "quiet time" and marked time thereafter:

"To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells

From the bells, bells, bells, bells,

Bells, bells, bells -

From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells."

And so on. The day rolled on, eventually rolling over me, but it was done. My wife returned to relieve me. The process itself was predicted to provide results in one to two weeks, but the daycare would never be able to handle the every 30 minute requirement. . . so we prayed that it would "take" in one week. Since that's all we had.

The following day I returned to work. My wife had just the one day left to take off and it was Tuesday. She resumed the 30 minute ritual with mixed success. Dry underwear in the morning, wet and dry in the afternoon, with mixed results on the potty. It was a weather forecast, and just as accurate. Mixed showers in the morning with areas of wetness in the afternoon, clearing by bedtime. But still we soldiered on.

I returned for duty. Heh. I said duty. I returned for duty on Wednesday. Up and on the potty. . . dry all morning. ALL morning. . . but she also didn't go on the potty. . . so DING! Time to potty, every thirty minutes, with no relief until nap-time, when her helper left and I put her down for her nap.  It's amazing how frequently thirty minutes arrives when you have to fight your daughter to stay on a toilet seat and "try to go potty". Ahh the amusement you'd have shared at my expense as I dramatized "going poopy" or "give it a push, Lily", complete with grunting sounds, pleading for success. Mind you this is only day three of the one to two week program.

She stayed dry all morning, was slightly wet after nap, but "Huzzah!" went poopy and pee in the afternoon following her nap. You GO girl. At this point my shoulders were hunched. I was scuffing across the floor, attempting to clean, and split 'fun time' with the girls, while maintaining the routine.  Yet still I bravely marched on, the footsteps of my (and her) progress measured by the banshee's wail of the revolving strawberry,

"By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells -

Of the bells -

Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,

Bells, bells, bells -

In the clamor and the clanging of the bells! "

Oh how its alarm jangled my nerves and brain by 5 o'clock when relief arrived. . . though not relief in the form of the potty.

The day my brain broke was Thursday. Up a little late by her standards her pull-up was damp, and she didn't have to go to the bathroom when I propped her up on the potty seat, coaxing her and cajoling her to keep her still and balanced on it. As the days went by each event got longer, an attempt to get her to use the potty, not just sit on it. Rewards were offered for success; treats,  and praise were lavished. The process would sometimes take 10 to 15 minutes. . . every thirty minutes.

"To the sobbing of the bells: -

Keeping time, time, time,

As he knells, knells, knells, ..."

I wanted to throw that fucking (yeah, that’s right, I’m not striking out the eff word THIS time) egg timer through the window. I hated it so much. But I was strong. . . a grownup for godsake. Ding! Time to potty! Thirty minutes later she was wet again but didn't go on the potty. Ding! Time to potty! Thirty minutes later wet yet again and still didn't go on the potty.

"To the tolling of the bells -

Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,

Bells, bells, bells, -

To the moaning and the groaning of the bells. "

At 10:30 that morning I had just finished a 15 minute attempt. She stayed there, not completely unhappily, as I coaxed her and praised her and offered stuffed animals and books. She'd not pooped all morning, and that was somewhat out of the ordinary. So she stayed a little longer, but did not go. I cleaned her off and helped her wash her hands, changing her underpants for the fourth or fifth time (periodic batch laundry runs are required when you only have seven pairs of underpants with which to work. . . and we were down to six, since on Day 2 there'd been an incident; an incident in which my wife completely lost her temper and I had to counsel her to "pull yourself together" which is almost always the wrong thing to say to someone who has lost his/her temper and definitely was in this particular instance. . . it was sort of ironic in hindsight). Within a few minutes of my having reset the Demon Egg Timer of Fleet Street she had pooped in her pants.

The success of this method pins its hopes on the tolerance of the parents in question for mess. . . and while my tolerance had increased over the last seven years (at that time) of parenting. . . it is not limitless. The method itself almost guarantees that at some point the child in question will poop in his/her britches and require some pretty significant cleanup. Lily, however, as part of her unique condition, does not sit still. Her muscles are always firing. . . changing her is a chore, her little feet constantly kicking you in the stomach (or worse), flailing about. . . or bouncing off the floor. Her hands immediately exploring any newly exposed territory, her body twisting to find a direction of escape. . .

I spent a solid five minutes just trying to think about how to change her. What made it worse was that her "helper" was there watching. She couldn't really HELP me because, short of pinning her arms to the floor, there was nothing I could have her do for me. The best way to do it, I decided, was to DO it! So I did it. And much squirming and fighting ensued.

There is no 'tidy' way to change poopy underpants short of cutting them off like a trauma nurse in a particularly messy E.R. situation. I considered this but discarded it. I "got down to it". Hands immediately began exploring but were blocked by my diaper changing kung fu. Legs countered with a kick to my chest. My hand grabbed the leg, but released it to block the questing hands again. The trunk twisted, escape was inevitable, but again, her Kung Fu was no match for my own. The other foot kicked free and the mess began. "Shit!" I said, probably not as quietly as I should have. Shit, indeed. On the carpet, on my hands, on her hands, on her legs. . . everywhere. I sent the "helper" to get wet paper towel as extricated the underpants from my daughters anatomy, tucking them inside the pull-up. . . cleaning shit speckled carpet with wet wipes. . . cleaning legs with one wipe as questing hands resoiled themselves to the cheerful giggling of my daughter. Wipe followed wipe, each newly cleaned body part soiling a new wipe that added to the stack of wadded up wipes in the pull-up. Still she kicked and twisted. Eventually she was clean. . . in a pull-up. . . as I tackled the carpet. . . then myself. Shorts. . . hands. . . The wipes stacked higher and higher until at last it was over. But my brain was broken.

Fuck you, egg timer. Fuck you, 30 minute changing schedule.

"I think we're pretty much done with the timer for a while," I told her helper calmly (think in terms of Hannibal Lector calm. . . the sort of calm that hides psychotic impulses beneath a cultured and charming patina). "My brain is broken right now and I'm going to need a little down time to fix it." Indeed immediately following this edict the stress began fading slowly away, sloughing off my psyche like a shed skin from a serpent. The helper left, and I fed my daughter an hour or so later, putting her on the potty when I damn well felt like it, just prior to her nap. No more underpants. No more ringing menace. Just, get her on the potty.

We scrapped the intensive potty training that night over a discussion with beer. Too much, too soon (potty training, not beer), expectations too high. . . plus I had the broken brain thingy to deal with. Friday was a much better day with my girls. I got to enjoy them. And yeah, I got her on the potty, but not to the alarm bell, just 'as needed'.

I know this. . . if my wife had told me to "get a hold of yourself" during the brain breaking. . . it's possible I'd have left her that instant. Packed my bags and left the house. I'd have been back, but only after a many, many gallons of alcohol.

The egg timer was still on my kitchen counter, but it sat at zero. No longer ticking like a shit-filled time bomb.  I put it in one of the cabinets a day or two later, and it will collect dust there until someone else moves it. . . I don't trust myself not to throw it through the window anymore.

That was two years ago.  A moderately more successful potty training effort occurred a year later that was championed by my wife.  Although it got us nearly 95% of the way there at the time, medication almost entirely eradicated it a month or so later, though why this was so, we aren’t certain.

Currently Lily is at about 90%.  We try to get her on the potty once every hour and a half or so, and through four weeks of school she’s had only two accidents (there have been more accidents, but our biggest worry has always been those that occurred at school).  We may tackle the issue again at some point in the future. . . but not with an egg timer.

Many thanks to Edgar Allen Poe for writing a fantastic poem about intensive potty training methods utilizing egg timers.