I just found out that my bathroom is going to cost me one million dollars, so today’s post is basically gonna be a couple of links and some whining.  Y’all are okay with that, right?  Good.

I found this article when a friend of mine shared it on Facebook.  I need to spend some time reading up on disciplining toddlers; I flat-out asked my wife the other day how long I had to wait before I could expect the boy to understand that when I tell him to do something I actually want it done promptly, and furthermore am deeply uninterested in a prolonged explanation/negotiation process.  The boy is actually pretty well-behaved in general so far, but he’s still not quite two yet, so I understand the next year or sixteen will be a time of limit-testing and tantrums.  I am old school enough to want to believe that creating an atmosphere of Do This or Daddy Smash will be sufficient but I suspect that something somewhat more nuanced and, well, humane will probably be necessary.  I’m generally pretty good at getting older kids to do what I want them to do, but dealing with middle-schoolers who are capable of seeing reason (or at least understanding I Will Kill You Boy) is somewhat different than raising a toddler.  I like the way this Janet Lansbury person thinks, for the most part (that’s the lady who wrote the article at the link you didn’t click on) so I’ll start by digging more deeply into her website in the near future.

Oh, and my mom asked when we were gonna start potty training him the other day.  Can I just say that potty training is the part of parenting I’m least looking forward to?  Another Facebook friend posted a picture of his kid standing on his shoes so that he could reach the urinal in a public bathroom and it made me suicidal.  Can’t we just get him a litterbox or something?  Is that okay?

I don’t know if I’ve claimed that being a parent hasn’t changed me much, but I certainly feel like being a parent hasn’t changed me much.  One way in which it absolutely has is that reading this article made me an absolute wreck, and it certainly wouldn’t have had that effect before the boy was born.  I’m occasionally surprised to find myself jumpier about safety-related stuff than my wife or parents or in-laws are; I wouldn’t have expected that, but it’s happened anyway.  What gets me the most is the sense that Horrible Shit Can and Will Happen at Any Goddamned Time that pervades the entire article.  It’s not like I wasn’t aware of this before having a kid, but it’s more likely to mess with my head now that I do.  I will say that I can’t wait until the moment when we can flip that damn car seat around so that I can actually see him from the front seat.

I’ll bitch more about the house once I have a better sense of what we’re in for.  It’s gonna be ugly.