On The Road Again

Just as I did last week, I'm writing this entry in the van, but this time we are headed in the opposite direction: back toward Morristown. We received the devastating news yesterday that in a few days, Russell's dad is going to have his leg amputated below the knee due to a diabetes-related bone infection, and we are going back to be there with them.

Monday of this week was overcast, so we joined some friends for story time at Barnes and Noble. I have no idea what the story was, so clearly it didn't make an impression on me, but I do remember it was something about recycling because the craft the kids did afterward involved cutting, gluing, pasting, and applying stickers to various recyclables collected by the B & N staff. The snack I also remember: animal crackers and milk. Perhaps for our purposes we should refer to this event as "Snack Time" rather than "Story Time." Afterward we went for lunch at Qdoba with our friends, and it was nice to see Henry interacting with two boys his own age. I made sure to mention to Henry that they are both in school already, just like he will be in August. He looked uncertain but (I think) a little interested.

On Tuesday we went to music time at the Gallatin library, where we spent thirty minutes singing and dancing to a variety of kids' songs that are becoming familiar to us nowthat we've attended a half dozen times or so ("The Shaky Egg," "We Are the Dinosaurs," a trilogy of the ABCsong, "Row Row Row," and "Twinkle Twinkle.") Charlie particularly enjoyed singing and dancing to the music. Afterward we went to the Whippoorwill for lunch with friends. Things were a bit rough with Charlie (he had missed his morning nap), and by that I mean he screamed throughout almost the entire lunch. We had fun anyway, and I attempted to cheer the waitress up by reminding her when we left that the remainder of her day should be easier by comparison. And by tipping her nicely. As we left the restaurant for home, I got a call that a friend had gone into labor, and her baby girl arrived safely later that evening, so that made the day special.

Wednesday was supposed to be a terribly stormy day, and it was - in Alabama. Three hundred plus people were killed that day after the biggest freaking tornado I've ever seen romped the state. In Hendersonville, thankfully, we never saw more than torrential rain, some thunder, and lightning. We (well, Russell) dragged a mattress downstairs to our designated tornado hiding place, the bathroom, just in case, and there it sits as I type, three days later. Since Wednesday, I have taken Henry to use the potty approximately eight times a day with that double mattress propped up against the wall in the tiny bathroom, and it's really starting to get to me. I've instructed Russell that the bathroom must be returned to its normal state immediately upon our return to Hendersonville next week. Anyway, Wednesday morning, we got out in the rain

with our friends Susie and James, Chiara and Eva, for a tour of the Hendersonville Police Department. Henry seemed a little intimidated by our tour guide, Corporal Something Or Other (Lloyd? Floyd?), a forty-something female officer whose demeanor jived perfectly with my past career experience with law enforcement officials. She seemed, shall we say, not terribly comfortable with children. As a sort of inside joke with myself, I thrust Charlie into her arms when I needed to lift Henry up to see something, and she became flustered, which I inwardly found hilarious. He of course began to cry immediately, which she attributed to all the guns and other weapons and tools on her work belt poking him in the side. She did a fine job of showing us around the police department, though. Henry and his friends learned about the importance of not talking to strangers when parents aren't around; wearing a seat belt; and knowing how to dial 911 in an emergency. (I am hesitant to teach him this last skill just yet, because I know he inevitably will dial it in a non-emergency, and local police departments in recent years have launched an ad campaign emphasizing the importance of only using 911 for emergencies. "For urgency without emergency, call eight six two, eight six oh oh..." I'm not sure I can teach a three year old A) how to distinguish an emergent situation from an urgent one, and B) how to dial 862-8600. I may live to regret this decision, or, more frighteningly, I may not live to regret this decision, but there you have it.) After the tour, we went out to eat with our friends at Backyard Burger. (Wow, we ate out a lot for lunch this week, oops.) Wednesday evening, as the storms that had earlier hit Alabama moved toward East Tennessee, I repeatedly called my parents each time I received notification on my iPhone of a tornado warning for Morristown. They sounded increasingly annoyed with each call, but I didn't care...better annoyed than dead or maimed, I say! I later found out that both of my sisters were also calling them to alert them of each warning, so they were getting three calls per warning and there were like six warnings, so...eighteen calls? I understood their annoyance a bit more at that point.

On Thursday, the boys and I had nothing planned. Nothing! It was fantastic. We did zero rushing - we just did things on our own schedule. I love an occasional day like this. Charlie got his morning nap in, then we all went to Publix to do some grocery shopping. The only thing of note during our trip occurred while we were in the makeup and personal hygiene aisle, Henry's new favorite aisle. Henry was doing his usual, opening up lip glosses and deodorants and such and smelling them. (I've previously written about his olfactory fascination.) Our rule is that he can only open the ones that aren't sealed up with plastic, so he's not removing the wrapping and opening them or anything. My thinking is that if they didn't want them opened, they would put plastic over them. How is a person supposed to select a fitting deodorant if she can't find out what it smells like first? I don't want to buy a deodorant smell-unsmelled, then get home only to find out it smells like Pinesol or Drakkar Noir or something. So anyway, Henry has very innocently removed the lid from a deodorant that called his name, with my approval, when the only unpleasant Publix employee I've ever encountered - she's in charge of stocking this aisle, I've seen her there before - walks right past me, bends down to Henry's level, snatches the deodorant from him and replaces the lid, and very sternly looks him right in the eye and shakes her head, "No NO!" over and over. Henry quickly backed away from her and came to my side, and I could see he was about to cry. Ordinarily I would have said something sort of passive-aggressive about her to Henry - "What a grump!" in a loud voice. However, in an effort to control my temper and teach Henry about respect for others' emotions, I just said, "Come on, Henry, let's go on to the dairy aisle," then I told him that the lady was probably nice but maybe having a bad day, and that he hadn't done anything wrong. (I recently read in a parenting book that in order to teach children about the emotional complexity of humans, parents should use unpleasant people as an opportunity to point out that others have bad days sometimes, too.) We'll probably go back later and rearrange the makeup section anyway, though.

On Friday morning, we went to a friend's house to watch the coverage of Prince William's marriage to Kate. It was a great theme for a play date. The little girls wore tiaras, and we had tea (well, I had coffee) and lots of dainty goodies, including crown-shaped sandwiches. We had a great time playing outdoors, and while we were there, Charlie began taking the most steps I've ever seen him take! Later that evening, as he walked around the kitchen to the applause of our whole family, we pronounced him officially a walker. Our friend Kristin took these pictures of Charlie outside at the royal party:

What the boys are doing now:

Henry: Well, on Easter, the Easter Bunny came and went, and, as promised, he left chocolate and took away all the "big boy diapers," which means that Henry has been forced to do all of his business in the potty. For the first few days, he didn't do a certain type of business anywhere, but finally, when things became urgent, he used the potty, and has been doing so every day since! Henry is very helpful around the house now, and just now he set the table for us at Grammy and Grandpa's house. He continues to be nicer and gentler with, and less jealous of, Charlie, so I'm hoping the troubles we had a few weeks ago were just a bad patch.

Charlie: I already mentioned that Charlie is walking. Often, when he does, he holds his hands above his head in victory, mouth open wide and smiling, going, "Ahhhhhhhhhh!" He is very proud of his new skill, and I am even more proud of him!

An Entry Typed Entirely on iPhone!

Well, it finally happened: I missed a week of blogging. I am determined that this was a fluke and not a new trend, and I have a good excuse! Last Saturday, April SIXTEENTH, I spent Jill Time working on our income tax return. It was even more fun than it sounds, and it ended not with my filing a completed return but with my filing for an extension, which was granted and allows me another six months of procrastination time. The highlights of the week I missed out on documenting included an Easter egg hunt, a trip to the zoo with our friends Melanie and Claudia, a visit to a fire station with our friends Jenny and Parker, and a tour of a third preschool for Henry that turned out to be The One. He starts school on August 8th and goes Tuesdays and Thursdays year round. We are really excited, and I had to tear him away from the room where he will have class, which I think is a pretty good sign. Also that week, we did away with both time outs as punishment (they weren't working) and treats as rewards for good behavior; this was after I read a book called Unconditional Parenting by Alfie Kohn. It has made me completely rethink my parenting style, and I think literally every parent should be made to read it, though I haven't figured out yet how to enforce that kind of law. Anyway, it's changed the way I deal with my kids, in a very positive way, and I hope it will be the solution to the jealousy issues we've been having with Henry. So far it seems to be working, but then I've been in Morristown all week, with lots of help from grandparents, and Henry's "issues" always seem much improved when he can have round-the-clock individual attention!

Which brings me to this week: the boys and I went to Morristown on Monday to help Mamaw and Papaw Moore, because Papaw is under the weather. Grammy drove down on Sunday to help us withthe trip on Monday, and I was glad she did, because you just never know about road trips. We spent the week at Grammy and Grandpa's, and they helped watch the boys while I helped Sharonrun the cash register at the store. The nights were rough because the three of us had to sleep in the bed together, and Mr. I-Still-Wake-Every-Two-Or-Three-Hours-Like-A-Newborn was in rare form. Also we missed Russell a lot. He had Good Friday off, though, so he joined us in Morristown for Easter weekend. As I type this, we are in the car on Easter Sunday, driving back to Hendersonville. The battery of our computer, fully charged when I placed it in the computer bag a few hours ago, has mysteriously depleted ninety percent of its charge, which explains why I am typing this entry with one finger, on the iPhone. In your face, computer! In your face.

I don't know if my mood is bad right now, or if it's our family troubles, or if it's the prospect of unpacking the kids and the van and the Easter candy in a few hours, or the prospect of returning to life in a town with no family nearby, or what, but I am having a terribly hard time drumming up anything positive or funny or entertaining to say here. Maybe you should stop reading now and just wait for next week's post. You could go see what's on television. No? OK, well there was one really funny thing that happened around midnight one morning in Morristown. I could tell you about that. Picture it: it's midnight, as I already mentioned, and the boys and I have been asleep for a couple of hours. We wake up because you-know-who hasn't had milk to drink in a couple of hours. I'm exhausted because I have been sleeping with both boys for a couple of nights, so it must have been like Thursday. So I grab Charlie and cradle him in my arm so I can give him the first of the six pack or so of bottles he drinks throughout each night. Meanwhile, Henry, who is lying on the bed next to us, is crying and crying, and I have no idea why. "Henry! HENRY!!!" I hiss, "Stop crying and tell me what's wrong!" I think maybe he is scared because it is very, very dark in the room where we are sleeping. He just keeps crying. As I continue prompting him to tell me why he's crying, Charlie is refusing his bottle, which is odd. Finally, "Charlie" surprises me by saying clearly, "Mommy, I don't WANT baby milk!" In my stupor, I had inadvertently grabbed Henry and tried to feed him a bottle of breast milk, while Charlie, starving, lay crying on the bed. I shared this story with family members later, and I got the impression they found it less hilarious than I did, so it's possible a level of sleep deprivation is required for it to be truly appreciated, but I still laugh when I think about it.

Here's what Henry and Charlie are up to right now:

Henry has begun calling us "Mom" and "Dad," so I guess he'll be getting his driver's license soon. He also continues to utter phrases that came straight from my mouth, which always takes me aback. "Mom, listen, I need to tell you something," he'll say seriously when he really wants my full attention. He has been protective of Charlie this week in Morristown, though again, I am hesitant to ascribe this to anything more than his having received lots of attention in Morristown. Still, it was nice to see! He had a really good time searching for Easter eggs this week with his grandparents, and one day he dyed eggs with each of his grandmothers separately, unbeknownst to the two of them.

Charlie is saying "Quack," "Bye bye," "Yay," and "Shh." When Russell was still in Hendersonville this week, and we were in Morristown, Charlie was very clearly saying "Dadadada" to him over the phone. One night we all slept in bed together, and I was saying, "Shh shh shh shh," to try to get Charlie to sleep, and he started saying it, too, and giggling. Then he and Henry would take turns saying it and giggling. Charlie has come up with a "move" of his own, totally unprompted: from a sitting position, he spins himself around 360 degrees, over and over, pausing between spins to acknowledge the applause and smiles that inevitably follow. "I ask you," he seems to demand, "could walking draw more attention than THIS?"

Some photos from our week:

But not loud like a train!

Holy whirlwind of a week! The things I had planned for us at the beginning of this week were distinctly different from the things that actually happened to us this week. Monday started off windy, but when has wind ever kept us from anything? Well, there was that one time the wind was so strong that...nope, never. Henry and Charlie and I headed out to Lowes' garden center to poke around. I pictured us exploring and discussing different species of plants and trees and flowers in a very fun, educational way, but instead we spent the bulk of our visit playing around and in the fountains. (This is not the diversion from our plans I mentioned a few sentences ago.) I pointed out to the boys, "Hey! Trees! Lowes sells trees! Did you know there were stores that sold trees?"because I kind of have a thing for trees (see the Arbor Day post from the "Henry Times." I think I did a post about that?), but Henry and Charlie only wanted to focus on the fountains, so we did that instead. It was getting very windy outside - I heard two male Lowes employees telling the older lady at the cash register in the garden center to "keep an eye on this weather," so we headed indoors to check out bird feeders. We ended up purchasing a Venus fly trap and a third hanging plant for our kitchen, some bird seed for our existing bird feeder, a bluebird house, and some garden gloves for Henry. Oh yeah, and some Swiss chard seeds, because Henry wanted seeds and that's what we had eaten the night before. As we checked out, we noticed the sky had opened up, and we were in Lowes with nary a poncho or an umbrella. The cashier offered to watch the boys while I went to get the van, and although she seemed perfectly nice, we decided to wait a minute for the rain to slack off, then make a run for it.

By the time we got back home, unpacked our purchases, changed clothes, had lunch, and downloaded a weather radio application for my iPhone (can't keep the actual radio in the bedroom during nap time - WAY too loud! This way I can get a silent notification on my phone if bad weather is headed our way) it was nap time. As we began our nap, we were under a tornado watch, but this is hardly unusual during springtime in Middle Tennessee. Charlie had opted out of his morning nap, so he was TI-RED. It was more difficult than usual to get him to go to sleep, which meant it took Henry longer than usual to go to sleep, but finally they dozed off. About twenty minutes later, I got a call from Russell. Now, Russell ordinarily would never dare to call during nap time, so I knew this was serious. Simultaneously, I got a bright red notification from the iPhone weather radio: tornado warning! This was what Russell was calling to tell me. Sumner County was under a tornado warning. It is a testament to my insanity where sleep and nap and schedules are concerned that I then actually posed this question: "Should I wake the boys and take them downstairs?" Russell quickly brought the situation into perspective for me, and I woke the boys and got them into the downstairs bathroom. Just as I did, we heard very loud sounds that didn't sound like a train. (I remember that because my first thought was, "Whoa, that was loud!" and the only-slightly-reassuring thought that followed quickly on its heels was, "But not loud like a train!" which I chose to interpret as incontrovertible proof that we were not experiencing a tornado.) I told my half-awake boys, "Stay here!" (Henry: "But I don't need to pee!") as I darted to the front door to look out the window. There I noticed three things: (1) it was raining very, very hard, and horizontally; (2) the standing trees in our front yard were blowing sideways; and (3) not all of the trees in our front yard were still standing. That was the loud sound: two thirds of one of our Bradford pears, the tree providing our yard with the most privacy from the street, had snapped off in two separate pieces. The picnic table was buried underneath it somewhere, and Henry's sand table had been moved, its cover gone. I took this in at a glance, then

headed back to the bathroom, where Henry was asking, "What's wrong, Mommy?" "Nothing!" I cried frantically, "Everything is fine!" I must have seemed a little concerned, though, because Henry decided at that point that Charlie was scared. "It's OK, Charlie, I'll hold your hand." (This really happened.) Once the storm was over, we went back to our naps, figuring we would deal with the whole tree situation at some later point. After all, all we'd really need was someone to remove the downed tree (we ended up getting our lawn guy to do it) and a replacement tree (Lowes sells trees!) and about twenty years for the tree to mature enough to provide the shade and privacy once offered by the Bradford pear (our grandkids will enjoy it!).

Tuesday we had plans to go into Nashville to have lunch with some of my old friends and coworkers, who would be meeting Charlie for the first time. These plans actually came into fruition, and we had a great time, but little did we know it would be the last social event of our week. (Our week's schedule had been a teensy bit too full, anyway, and I foresaw lots of rushing around with tired boys on my hands: Wednesday morning we planned to visit a fire station with our moms' group; Wednesday afternoon we would go to a birthday party; Thursday we would fly kites at the park with the moms' group; Friday we would attend another friend's birthday party and tour another preschool for Henry.) On Tuesday afternoon we got news from Russell's family that his grandfather was very ill, so we decided to make a trip to Morristown the following day. Wednesday was a relatively normal travel day; you know, six hours of packing for the trip, three hours of trip - normal. Thursday Russell went with his parents to visit Papaw Woody at a hospital in Oak Ridge, and the boys and I spent the day with my parents at their house. Grammy and Grandpa hid Easter eggs for Henry outside, a "test run," and blew bubbles with him in the yard. Charlie mostly spent his time exploring every inch of the house (he's totally unaware of ever having been here before, and at any rate, he wasn't able to explore the house before now) and harassing the cat. On Friday morning, Grandpa made blueberry and strawberry pancakes for us outdoors on his grill's griddle, then we blew more bubbles and looked for dandelions. At lunch we went to Russell's parents' store, where we hung out with them and Aunt Carrie and Baby Dylan for a while. In the evening, Aunt Wendy and Uncle David came for a visit, and we all went to eat Mexican food for dinner. Russell's grandfather's condition took a surprise turn for better, and he was moved from the ICU to a regular room at the hospital. We have plans to stay in Morristown until Sunday if he continues to improve. So, it wasn't the week we had planned, but it was a week with family, which we always, always, always welcome!

Ahhhhhbless you!

We went to three fun play dates this week - Monday, Wednesday, and Friday - so I was required to devote a relatively small amount of brainpower to finding ways to occupy the boys. A welcome respite, I'll be honest. Wednesday's play date was special because it was our friend Cindy's annual Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia (CDH) party. Our friend Claire is a CDH survivor, and we are always happy for a reason to celebrate her. Everyone was to wear turquoise in observance of the date, but only I was able to do so, as the boys don't own a single article of turquoise clothing. I dressed Charlie in blue and Henry in green (or maybe it was vice versa), my calculations being that blue + green = turquoise, but I'm not sure the other partygoers picked up on that. Probably they just thought, "Wow, she took care with her own dress but not her kids'! How festive!"

On Tuesday, we toured another potential preschool for Henry. This one is a for-profit, secular school, and it costs twice as much as the church-based one we toured last week. Unfortunately (for the school) I was not twice as impressed with it. The facility itself was obviously newer and more expensive, but the assistant director did not impress me - we stood at the front desk for ten minutes before anyone appeared in the window, though I should add that we were more than ten minutes late for our appointment, so maybe we were being punished? - and the teacher to student ratio was higher than I would have liked. In the classroom we visited, there were like eighteen three-year-olds with one teacher (who appeared to be about 25 years old) and one teacher's assistant (who was maybe 19 years old). They were seated at tables of four or five kids each, so at any given time, two or three of the tables were unaccompanied by a teacher. Many of them looked lost (I thought), and I mentally inserted Henry at one of the tables unattended by a teacher, and that was when I decided this was not the school for us. Now, I know he won't be able to have a teacher holding his hand all the time (he actually asked me the other day, "Mommy, will the teacher hold me?"!!!), but I would like to see him in a classroom with fewer students. After we left our tour, we met friends at the little walking trail next to the library and enjoyed the beautiful weather, playing in a dried-up creek bed that Henry pretended was the ocean. It was a good thing we got out that day, too, because the rest of the week was cool and intermittently rainy. On Tuesday night, my parents (Grammy and Grandpa), fresh from their trip to Israel, spent the night with us. They brought the boys toy camels and donkeys, and shirts with a screen-printed Elmo which read, "Shalom!" We were glad to have them back safely, and when they left the next morning, Henry said, "I hope you come back soon!" We are planning a trip to Morristown over Easter, and he asks every day if it is Easter yet.

On Thursday, we had the morning to ourselves, and after trying and failing to get Charlie to take his morning nap, we headed to Target. We looked around at a leisurely pace, spending probably an hour browsing through the store in our standard pick-up-an-item-of-interest-for-each-boy,-deposit-it-wherever-we-happen-to-be-when-interest-is-lost,-and-repeat fashion. I will most definitely go to shopper's hell, if it exists, for these habits (once I was in the grocery store with my mother-in-law and suggested that we just put an item back on the nearest shelf, rather than in its rightful spot, and she gave me an odd look and said, "Oh no, we don't do that," which made me wonder if something might be seriously wrong with me), but it's just too exhausting to heave ourselves around in that big red shopping cart and go back to return all those items to their designated places. We looked at action figures in the toy section, we checked out arts and crafts in the arts and crafts section, buying Henry two glue sticks he desperately needed, we perused shower curtains and bath mats for the upstairs bathroom, we bought a picture frame, we bought the ingredients to make oatmeal chocolate chip cookies later that day (having just that morning sworn off sugar "for good this time"), we picked up a small bean bag chair for the play room, then thought better of it, wondering if we really had the space. Finally, we went to check out, and Henry said, "Mommy! Will you get Elmo for me? I was sitting on him." Henry was in the big part of the cart, the cart part, and he had brought an Elmo figure into the store with him, then dropped it into the cart when something else caught his attention. I looked underneath him, shifted the brown sugar and oats and chocolate chips around - no Elmo. Did I mention the cart is red? The same shade of red as Elmo? And it has Elmo-sized holes all over it? Elmo apparently had abandoned ship at some point on our journey. So what else could we do? We heaved the cart around and retraced our steps, calling out for Elmo. Henry mused that he was probably crying somewhere. I knew which path to follow because of the conspicuous items that littered the aisles where we had been. The search took us probably twenty minutes, but there was no sign of Elmo, and eventually we had to admit to ourselves that he was probably lost forever. Henry took it well, and we returned to the checkout line to load our items onto the belt. As I removed my purse from the platform beneath the cart, I noticed a red object interrupting the symmetry of the cart's lines: it was Elmo! He was with us all along! I mused that he was probably laughing down there the whole time, the smug little bastard, and I glared at him, returned him to Henry, and we all went home. We made cookies later that afternoon, and they were delicious!

Quickly, quickly, as the end of Jill Time is drawing nigh: What the boys are up to this week:

Charlie: Charlie will hold the phone up to his ear now, chubby little elbow pointing forward, and try to say "hello"!!!! I could not be more excited about this if he had actually invented the iPhone. I've also caught him saying or trying to say "ball," "dance," "night night," "mama," and "dada," and he is definitely saying "bye bye"! It's like all of a sudden, in the space of a week, he is getting the talking thing. He is eating solids better now, in no small part because I borrowed a book of blender baby food recipes from a friend. Apparently, he likes solids, he just doesn't like solids that taste bad! Anyway, he is still drinking WAY more breast milk than advised by any source, anywhere...not sure what to do about that. He currently enjoys a bottle at 8:00 p.m., 11:00 p.m., 2:00 a.m., and 4:00 or 5:00 a.m. And by "enjoys," I mean "demands," as in "accepts no substitute." Dr. Johnson, our pediatrician, says this is merely a bad habit which simply needs to be broken, and then he will sleep. Illuminating advice! Charlie has discovered that he likes to "help" me unload the dishwasher. This involves reaching in, grabbing anything knife-like and potentially deadly, and slicing it through the air before I can stop him. He then steps back to get away from me and bumps his head on the drawer that is open at head-level (Charlie's head), after which I pick him up and comfort him, then set him back down, and repeat until the dishwasher is empty. Another pastime he enjoys now is holding his hand immersed in a glass of cold drinking water; I think it may be some sort of endurance test he's doing. Maybe he will be a runner like I used to be!

Henry: the funniest thing I've noticed about Henry this week is the new fake sneeze he does. I know it's fake because instead of sounding like "Ahhhhhhchoo!" or something similar, it sounds like "Ahhhhblessyou!" and it cracks me up every time. He thinks "bless you" is part of the sneeze itself, not something you say after the sneeze. Get it? That's funny. He has been kinder to Charlie this week, and with less bribery. There is a certain bodily function that Henry still refuses to perform in a toilet, and every time he feels the urge, he tells me, I put a diaper on him, and he goes behind a chair - Henry: "I need my privacy!" Russell: "You know a good place to find privacy? In the bathroom!" - and then I change his diaper. So, we've devised an ingenius plan by which the Easter Bunny, when he comes to bring the eggs and candy and grass, will take away Henry's diapers, thereby forcing him to use the potty when nature calls. It's foolproof! Henry has already begun trying to reason his way out of this. Henry: "We'll have to buy some more diapers!" Me: "The Easter Bunny says we aren't allowed to buy any more." Henry: "You said the Easter Bunny couldn't talk...?" Me: (Long silence) then, "The Easter Bunny is taking away your diapers. You'll have to use the potty." We'll see how that goes...