 my older son is diaper-free and the dog is on a schedule where I regularly express her bowels (gag), life feels much less shitty.
Pun intended.
Now it’s pissy.
Madison’s acupuncturist (yes…her acupuncturist…everyone says it’s the best treatment for FCE…and by “everyone”, I don’t mean the Google) suggested we stop expressing her bladder, thereby stimulating her nerves to regain some control.
Meaning: with patience and timing she pees intentionally about half the time.
It also means she pees unintentionally half the time. Particularly when she’s excited and I haven’t timed it well, she’s standing one second and squatting the next.
Only, because of her neurological issues, she can’t effectively squat, so she walks as she squats. Meaning: she leaves a trail of pee. And if she loses control in the apartment, she knows she’s doing wrong, panics and ends up peeing in lines (or circles) on rugs.
And it’s ALWAYS on rugs. Why can’t it be on our wood floors? Nope. I swear she aims for the rugs just to piss me off.
We clean up and toss urine-moistened towels in the bathtub to fester until laundry day.
And then there’s adorable Ellison.
His teacher says he’s a great “I gotta pee” announcer and there are no accidents.
But after school that wonderful kid would change pants six times a day IF I changed him every time he’s wet.
But I don’t.
If we’ve JUST arrived at the playground and then he decides to wet himself a little bit, I let him keep going. Don’t get me wrong. His pants aren’t soaked, he’s merely a little wet. It doesn’t seem to bother him. So what’s the harm?
I need to be better about asking him every 20 friggin’ minutes if he needs to go potty.
And then there’s nighttime. We’ve gone cold turkey: no overnight diapers. He wakes up dry about half the time. We give him a “ghost pee” around 11 pm, and when Colton wakes up #tearlesscrying, I check Ellison’s bed. He’s still dry. Then an hour later, when he wakes, he’s wet.
He usually wakes us up quietly saying, “I’m a wittle bit wet. Can you change me? Is it ok?”
I always answer, “It’s cool, buddy. No problem,” then strip the bed, and toss the sheets into the bathtub to ferment with the canine-urine-soaked towel.
A mere few hours later, the bathroom fetidness is unbearable. So, if it can be squeezed into the schedule, the 20th dollar of the week is spent in the basement laundry machines.
The peeing has been so pervasive for the past few months that I’ve come to think standing urine (in towels and toddler pants…not on the floor) smells worse than dog poop. Poop makes me gag, but pee makes me wince and recoil. It’s an entirely different olfactory experience I never imagined enduring for months.
Over Memorial Day weekend, we were away and left a pile of laundry in the bathtub. Upon our return, the apartment smelled like a hamster cage. Yeah, that was awesome. The stink is gone, I think.
That damn dog better regain control soon. And those damn daddies need to be better about asking Ellison to pee more often.
I can’t wait to see what parallel issues my dog and children will develop, next.
Y’all have any suggestions for saving me from urinarily short-circuiting?…be they for toddlers or canines? Thx. I need some help!
Got nothin’ for ya’ on the little guys amigo – our “baby” will be 33 next month, so such recollections are in the distant confines of my cobwebbed memory.
On the pooch, if ya’ want me to put you in touch with my Sis, who’s a veterinarian, just let me know … she may know some “tricks of the trade” she can share with you.
One of my kids had a bedwetting problem. The pediatrician suggested giving him a reward for every night he stayed dry. Soooo…I would give him a candy bar and withing two weeks, no more bedwetting problem. Pscyhology of learning... reward good behavior. Worked like a charm.
Sorry. No suggestions, but I sympathize. We have a piece of plastic in the living room where my 14-year-old cat has taken up permanent residence. (He has apparently forgotten how to use a litter box.). One day you will laugh about this & the second boy will be easier to train than the first (probably). 😊Oxford is on course to have the highest ever proportion of state school pupils in its undergraduate intake this autumn, publishing figures on Friday showing that just 41.5% of offers were made to private school candidates.
State school pupils received 58.5% of offers. Based on previous years, the proportion of state school pupils accepted is likely to be around 1% lower than this figure. The increased share of offers reflects a rise in applications from state-educated children, which reached 64.3% for entry this autumn.
Universities in England have been told they could be stripped of the right to charge higher fees if they fail to attract a wider mix of students including state school pupils, ethnic minorities and teenagers from areas with no tradition of going on to higher education.
The sharpest disparity between state and private school success is at Oxford, where nearly 47% of the intake are privately educated. But 13 of the 16 English Russell Group universities are below existing benchmarks.
The university's director of undergraduate admissions, Mike Nicholson, said: "We are pleased that figures for 2010 and preliminary offer figures for 2011 show the proportion of state students gradually rising. We believe this shows the great amount of effort and energy we have put into our outreach work is paying off."
As a whole, applications to Oxford rose to a record high of 17,300 for 2011 entry. Applications from state school candidates have increased by 73% over the past decade compared with a 31% rise from the private school pupils who have traditionally dominated Oxbridge.
The university also published figures on Friday for admissions in the current academic year, which showed that seven black Caribbean students were accepted out of 40 who applied. In autumn 2009, just one black Caribbean student was accepted out of 35.
The admissions figures for 2010 entry show that 55.4% of Oxford's British undergraduate intake was state-educated. Nearly a quarter went to comprehensive schools, compared with less than 20% for the year starting in autumn 2009.
Oxford argues that poor attainment at school level presents a major challenge to its aspiration to admit the best candidates, pointing out that independent school students make up a third of all those getting 3 As at A-level.
The university also says the focus on the type of school obscures the fact that some poor children are privately educated. Oxford published a breakdown of figures for 2009/10, which showed that 935 students came from families with household incomes below £16,190, the earnings threshold for free school meals. Of these, 295 had been educated in private schools.
Nicholson said: "Household income is one important measure, and it does not correlate in an obvious way with school type.
"Our figures show that nearly one in ten of our students come from households in the lowest income bracket. Those students went to a range of school types, confirming that state/independent does not equal poor/rich."
Nicholson contrasted this statistic with figures based on pupils who received free school meals. Less than 1% of the intake at the most selective universities, including Oxbridge, were pupils on free school meals, according to a study by the charity the Sutton Trust.
He said: "There are very many more students from low-income backgrounds than there are students who were on free school meals – not everyone on the lowest incomes is eligible, and not everyone takes them up."
The breakdown of household income for 2009/10 show that nearly 73% of Oxford's intake that year were students from households with an income above £50,000. This is the cut-off point for a government maintenance grant.
The latest admissions figures show high success rates for candidates who attended Oxford's summer school for state school pupils. More than 40% of summer school students received offers – a success rate nearly double that of all applicants.
View all comments >David Hamilton Koch, who often said that he never met a fossil fuel he didn't like, died August 22, 2019 of complications of a stake driven into his heart. He passed peaceably on the deck of his beloved yacht, "The Kristallknacht", surrounded by galley slaves, food tasters, his wife, three mistresses, three known children, dozens of angry relatives who have been cut out of the will, and the PR Department of the legal team of Dewey, Cheatham & Howe.
He leaves behind polluted air, poisoned water, a destabilized Kansas public education system, a vast climate-change-denial apparatus, the CATO Institute, Americans for Prosperity and 1,347 other conservative think-tanks and political front groups that will continue to fight progress for many decades to come. He takes with him $45 billion