Communication of Elimination Communication

I have a habit of mowing the lawn and listening to numerous podcasts, like TWIT, NPR Technology, Earth and Sky, and ABC news Nightline. Tonight as we were finishing up the yard, Nightline had a story on infant "elimination communication", or as I put it "going diaperless." It about made me double over laughing to where I couldn't push the mower until I realized they weren't kidding! Here are excerpts from the story off the ABC news website (complete story):

It's the latest thing in child-rearing — dressing your baby diaper-free.

Instead of putting diapers on their children, some parents use natural cues and signals to determine when their little ones need to "go," and react accordingly.

"We do potty parties. You know, 'Mommy go potty,' 'Campbell go potty' — and he usually goes. I go, and he goes," said Nancy Meyer.

Meyer is one of about a dozen women in New Paltz, N.Y., who participate in an infant potty training support group run by Lolli Edinger.

"Keeping a child out of their waste in a diaper keeps them clean, keeps them hygienic, keeps them comfortable," Edinger said.

Erica Chase-Salerno hosts the monthly meeting in her home, and she says that "It's about honoring her body. That's one of the main reasons we do it. When you catch your first pee, you're hooked. I caught my first pee — I thought it was a fluke and I kept thinking it was flukes, but when you keep having a coincidence, you're on track — once you get the first one, you can't look back."

'Attachment Parenting'

The moms say going diaper-free helps them relate to their children. To get their children to go, the moms use hand signals and the "ssss" sound, and one mom even had a song to get her son to go.

"I realized it's not so much about diapers, it's really about attachment parenting. Just listening to the baby's cues and responding to her cues. I communicate with her better now," said Carla McGarry, the mother of 1-year-old Kristina.

These parents do use diapers sometimes, such as overnight or when they go out, but when they are at home with the child, the babies are bare and the moms try to predict when they need to use the bathroom. If they're right, they call it a catch, and if they fail to predict one, it's a miss.

"I know that she is going to need to pee now," said Chase-Salerno. "She gets in a zone and I feel this is one of them. What I do is I bring in toys with her because sometimes she'll sit a little bit longer and release and relax and pee while she's playing."





OK. Before I begin, let me first say: "To Each Their Own."

But for my part I don't see me going around all day watching for that little grimace or squirm on "My Own". Nor do I see myself constantly asking Megan or Madelyn "Go Potty?" just to make sure I don't have to get the carpet cleaner out from under the sink.

Being a guy, I also find it very awkward in considering a "potty party" with either of my girls. It's hard enough to dodge certain questions, as is. For example, Megan has a habit of waiting for me right outside the door after I have ran to hide--- err, I mean, had to go use the restroom. The small bathroom off our bedroom has a pocketdoor (lockable) with about a 1-1/2 inch gap at the bottom. One time as I came out after one too many cups of coffee at work, I was met by Megan with a look of puzzlement. She asked, "Daddy, why do your feet point the wrong way when you potty?"

Maybe also, guys just handle messes in a different way: we are not as proactive. Let's be honest for most guys, the "cue" that their child needed to go, would be a puddle in the floor, or an odor wafting from down the hall. Well, that's not quite correct, we as men would be proactive, just in a much different way. Instead of making "ssss" sounds (which by the way most guys make, but not with their mouths) or singing little potty songs, men would simply go to the ag store, buy a bale, and layout hay in Junior's room. That's the men's version of going diaperless, and we have been doing this for many years with the animals we have been responsible for. Not saying anyone's child is an animal mind you, and then again you can now purchase diapers for animals, so maybe I'm just behind the time.

So as we --actually I should say Brandy--prepares to potty train Madelyn (who's name in Hebrew must mean "stubborn as a rock"), I don't see us rushing out to the neighbor's barn, nor myself with pitchfork in hand at my front door. And Brandy will not expect me to "sssss" or sing songs, although I could, like:

  • "Smoke on the Water"
  • "To Him who Sits on the Throne"
  • "There's a Fountain Free"

Maybe I'll just stick to cheering, "Yeah! you potty-ied!"


No children were harmed in the making of this school year.

As we approach the end of another school year, I share this with you:

Under Which Lyre
A Reactionary Tract for the Times

(Phi Beta Kappa Poem, Harvard, 1946)
W. H. Auden

Ares at last has quit the field,
The bloodstains on the bushes yield
To seeping showers,
And in their convalescent state
The fractured towns associate
With summer flowers.

Encamped upon the college plain
Raw veterans already train
As freshman forces;
Instructors with sarcastic tongue
Shepherd the battle-weary young
Through basic courses.

Among bewildering appliances
For mastering the arts and sciences
They stroll or run,
And nerves that steeled themselves to slaughter
Are shot to pieces by the shorter
Poems of Donne.

Professors back from secret missions
Resume their proper eruditions,
Though some regret it;
They liked their dictaphones a lot,
T hey met some big wheels, and do not
Let you forget it.

But Zeus' inscrutable decree
Permits the will-to-disagree
To be pandemic,
Ordains that vaudeville shall preach
And every commencement speech
Be a polemic.

Let Ares doze, that other war
Is instantly declared once more
'Twixt those who follow
Precocious Hermes all the way
And those who without qualms obey
Pompous Apollo.

Brutal like all Olympic games,
Though fought with smiles and Christian names
And less dramatic,
This dialectic strife between
The civil gods is just as mean,
And more fanatic.

What high immortals do in mirth
Is life and death on Middle Earth;
Their a-historic
Antipathy forever gripes
All ages and somatic types,
The sophomoric

Who face the future's darkest hints
With giggles or with prairie squints
As stout as Cortez,
And those who like myself turn pale
As we approach with ragged sail
The fattening forties.

The sons of Hermes love to play
And only do their best when they
Are told they oughtn't;
Apollo's children never shrink
From boring jobs but have to think
Their work important.

Related by antithesis,
A compromise between us is
Impossible;
Respect perhaps but friendship never:
Falstaff the fool confronts forever
The prig Prince Hal.

If he would leave the self alone,
Apollo's welcome to the throne,
Fasces and falcons;
He loves to rule, has always done it;
The earth would soon, did Hermes run it,
Be like the Balkans.

But jealous of our god of dreams,
His common-sense in secret schemes
To rule the heart;
Unable to invent the lyre,
Creates with simulated fire
Official art.

And when he occupies a college,
Truth is replaced by Useful Knowledge;
He pays particular
Attention to Commercial Thought,
Public Relations, Hygiene, Sport,
In his curricula.

Athletic, extrovert and crude,
For him, to work in solitude
Is the offence,
The goal a populous Nirvana:
His shield bears this device: Mens sana
Qui mal y pense.

Today his arms, we must confess,
From Right to Left have met success,
His banners wave
From Yale to Princeton, and the news
From Broadway to the Book Reviews
Is very grave.

His radio Homers all day long
In over-Whitmanated song
That does not scan,
With adjectives laid end to end,
Extol the doughnut and commend
The Common Man.

His, too, each homely lyric thing
On sport or spousal love or spring
Or dogs or dusters,
Invented by some court-house bard
For recitation by the yard
In filibusters.

To him ascend the prize orations
And sets of fugal variations
On some folk-ballad,
While dietitians sacrifice
A glass of prune-juice or a nice
Marsh-mallow salad.

Charged with his compound of sensational
Sex plus some undenominational
Religious matter,
Enormous novels by co-eds
Rain down on our defenceless heads
Till our teeth chatter.

In fake Hermetic uniforms
Behind our battle-line, in swarms
That keep alighting,
His existentialists declare
That they are in complete despair,
Yet go on writing.

No matter; He shall be defied;
White Aphrodite is on our side:
What though his threat
To organize us grow more critical?
Zeus willing, we, the unpolitical,
Shall beat him yet.

Lone scholars, sniping from the walls
Of learned periodicals,
Our facts defend,
Our intellectual marines,
Landing in little magazines
Capture a trend.

By night our student Underground
At cocktail parties whisper round
From ear to ear;
Fat figures in the public eye
Collapse next morning, ambushed by
Some witty sneer.

In our morale must lie our strength:
So, that we may behold at length
Routed Apollo's
Battalions melt away like fog,
Keep well the Hermetic Decalogue,
Which runs as follows:

Thou shalt not do as the dean pleases,
Thou shalt not write thy doctor's thesis
On education,
Thou shalt not worship projects nor
Shalt thou or thine bow down before
Administration.

Thou shalt not answer questionnaires
Or quizzes upon World-Affairs,
Nor with compliance
Take any test. Thou shalt not sit
With statisticians nor commit
A social science.

Thou shalt not be on friendly terms
With guys in advertising firms,
Nor speak with such
As read the Bible for its prose,
Nor, above all, make love to those
Who wash too much.

Thou shalt not live within thy means
Nor on plain water and raw greens.
If thou must choose
Between the chances, choose the odd;
Read The New Yorker, trust in God;
And take short views.

In the Eyes of My Daughter

Okay. Don't fall out of your chairs. This is Brandy. And yes, I am making a post to the blog. I just couldn't help it.

It's fixin' to be Mother's Day. One of my favorite things about Megan being in school is knowing that she will bring sweet little hand-made projects home at special times like these. When I picked her up today, she ran down the sidewalk half-covered in mud carrying a little pot with a beautiful pink flower in it. It had a little sign sticking out of it which said

Happy Mother's Day
Love
Megan
(signed in her very own sweet little hand writing)

They went to the ABC Greenhouse across town on a school bus this morning. This is a big thing for Megan. As long as we live in town, she will never have to board a bus every morning for school. Or suffer the ride home in one after school. I only say that because that was my plot in life for about 7 years until Shane got his driver's license. I hated those yellow dogs. She thinks its really cool to ride on the bus. I pretend to be excited for her.

She enjoyed the visit to the nursery. They got to pick out the flower they wanted for their mothers. And for those of you who know Megan, of course, she picked a pink one. She especially enjoyed the trip, because we go to church with the owners of the nursery. Bob was there to give her a sucker. (Something he gives all the kids at church on Sunday morning. I still don't know how he gets all of them in his pockets without pocking himself to pieces.)

Anyway, back to the reason for this post: When she got in the car, she proceeded to empty out her folder, handing me each piece of paper one at a time until it was empty and all the contents were lying in the front seat next to me. Almost a full year of school and she still can't make it 12 blocks home before showing me all the stuff she has done and learned.

The first thing she showed me was a "pink" card obviously prepared by her teacher, but it's contents were definitely from the mouth of a child named Megan.

Here is how it went:

My Mom

My Mom is amazing.
She likes to eat cereal.
She always takes naps.
The best thing about my Mom is she makes things with me!

Happy Mother's Day!
2007
Megan

Well, there you have it. Four random bits of information about me.


Studies in Corinthians Part 14

This lesson looks at the last verses of 1 Corinthians 9, and the necessity of self discipline in a Christian life.




New Dallas Mavericks Logo

After 67 regular season wins, to get schooled by the 8th seed... what a disgrace.