Success and Failure (mostly failure)

I had one of those moments recently when I finally really felt like I was a successful parent. Romney turned 5 this month and Marie asked him one day what he wanted to do for his birthday. His answer? "Mom, I want to go backpacking! The kind where we sleep in a tent. And...rock climbing."

YES! Success! Maybe you don't define the success of your parenting the same why I do but whether you call it brainwashing, proper training, getting your kids to like cool things, or just plain old getting your kids to like what YOU like so you can bring them with you - to me this really felt like a true, tangible, measurable evidence of our superior parenting skills.

However, as those of you with more experience know, it was all a set up for finding out that we are not that great after all.

You see, we have this problem in our basement with a certain smell. This certain smell, well, it smells a lot like pee. We can't (our couldn't) find the source. We knew the area of the basement and we know that we have son with less than perfect bladder control but all the usual sources of such smells (you know - the bed, a pair of underwear stashed behind his dresser etc) were all coming up empty. Until today. Today I was helping Romney clean his room when I was moved by my worst fears to ask my little guy a point blank question.

"Rom, have you ever gone to the bathroom in your bedroom?"

silence

"Rom, I need to know. Have you ever gone to the bathroom in your bedroom?"

severe lack of eye contact and...silence

"okay Rom, I'm not going to get angry but I need to know the truth. Have you ever gone pee in your room?"

"Yes."

"In this corner?"

"Yes."

"Why?" (trying to sound like a thoughtful, understating dad instead of what I really am which is a super grossed out and seriously weirded out dad)

"Well, sometimes I really have to go and I don't think I can make it upstairs."

"So you go in the corner of your room?????"

Later I got it out of him that he had done it at least "a few" times. At this point when he realized I wasn't going to yell at him he talking about it didn't seem to phase him. ("oh yeah, a few times at least. Check out my Iron Man, Dad!")

(can you believe such a cute kid PEES IN THE CORNER OF HIS ROOM? ahhhhh)

Oh well. Back to failure parent status. It's okay, I really feel more comfortable this way. It was a lot of pressure for those few days when I was a successful parent. I'm glad to have that behind me.

(ps - dad, can I borrower your carpet shampooer thing?)

long long time ago

I know many of you think we quit blogging. We haven't. It just that Marie and I have been really really busy.

cheezits

so I was sitting by Romney in church today, and he was animatedly telling me all about spiderman, complete with loud noises. apparently he was loud enough that he could be heard from the stand, but I didn't know that until later. But he was loud enough and the rest of the church was quiet enough, that it was clear we needed to calm things down a little. So I leaned over and said, "Romney, we need to be reverent. All the people are being really reverent right now because they're thinking about Jesus."

"I DON'T WANT CHEEZ-ITS! I DON'T LIKE CHEEZ-ITS!"

not exactly reverence material.

"um, Jesus, Rom. Jesus. People are thinking about Jesus."

Rom also recently got stuck in this box.....

911

Romney - Mom - who's number is 911?

Marie - It is for emergencies, like if there is a fire or if someone is really hurt or maybe if you need a policeman.

Romney - yeah, OR mom, like if you jump out of an airplane and you forget your parachute. Could you call 911 then?

Marie- uh, well, I don't know.

Romney - no mom, I mean like if you jump out of a plane and you forget your parachute but you have your phone.

Marie - sure Rom, good thinking.