Stop posting on Facebook about potty-training!

At a Memorial Day weekend barbecue we hosted, a ton of long-time friends dropped by. It was awesome. One of my former Sun-Times colleagues, whom I adore, was sort of teasing me about posting about potty-training. (But it's sooooo hard not to, seriously!) Anyway, he "suggested" a few times I not post too much about that. I suggested that when he stops bashing Obama we'd have a deal. Heh heh. It was all good-natured ribbing.

Or was it? He's right -- I don't have to run on and on on Facebook about potty-training because I CAN DO IT HERE IN MY BLOG! (OK, three of the five people who read this blog just shut the page down).

In a nutshell, Little Man is three weeks into wearing big-boy underwear -- SpongeBob, Cars and Toy Story themes have all been hits. He's good about going when you take him, but still has yet to get to where he tells us he has to go. Let's just say that led to uh, five accidents last Saturday when absent-minded mommy was with him all day. Now, we just need to get him to poop in the potty more.

It's easy to forget how hard it is to learn a really big, new thing. This is a total game-changer for him and sometimes he seems a little bewildered by it all -- what do you mean, Mommy, I have to stop playing with these fun toy tools my daddy bought me so I can sit on that little circular piece of plastic you keep breathlessly calling the "big-boy potty"?

I'm trying to apply this kind of understanding to my eldest son, who, uh, will be taking some time off from college for awhile. I know what happened this school year -- it happens to a lot of kids -- and yet I can't process it. It's no comfort when people tell me, hey, this happens to college freshmen all the time. This isn't just any college kid. He's MINE. And he's smart, so smart, and yet so, so bone-headed. I love him to pieces and want to strangle him, too. I hope he's reading this and thinking, gee, my mom is so awesome and smart, I am going to get my head on straight and call her more often. A mama can dream, right? :)

Baby C, my little daughter, is sooooo close to walking. She decided to start biting before walking, which is something considering she only has like, 4 1/2 teeth. Baby C has wispy, flowy blond hair that is the softest thing known to man. She has sweet, chubby cheeks and startlingly pale blue eyes. She's affectionate, a good sleeper and playful. So Baby Vampiress has been hiding her teeth pretty good until the last few weeks at daycare, from where we started to get a few bite reports. Hmm, not my little sweet pea, no way.

Then she nipped Little Man, this morning. Little Man tends to be, uh, a dramatic boy and my husband and I assumed he was just overreacting. Then we saw the two (two!) teeth marks on his hand. Oh man. I felt bad. When I was a kid, I was the oldest sibling and my sister was the cute one who, I still insist, got away with murder. Baby Vampiress is going to make her Auntie M proud.

Back to running. Did a 10K race last weekend in 57:57, which is pretty good. I did not wear a watch and told my running buddy to not tell me our pace or how we were doing. It was alright, but I don't think I could do that too often. I like to be in control and in the know. That exercise where you close your eyes and fall backwards into someone's arms, trusting they will catch you? I would rather change a diaper.

Marathon training began this week! How do I know? Tuesday morning one of my running friends said "hey, training begins this week" and thus the normal "5 at 5" (meaning 5 miles at 5 a.m.) we were already doing became a training run. Six years ago when I began training for my first marathon I had the dates memorized for months on when official training would commence. I was, uh, a wee bit obsessive. (My husband is rolling his eyes if he is reading this and probably shorting, too). I'm hoping my blaseness (is that a word, shut up, I don't care) is a sign that I'm going to be cool, calm and collected training for the Chicago Marathon this time around. Don't tell my husband I just wrote that. I don't think he's totally recovered from some of my past neuroses, er, I mean, marathon training periods.

Happy running, people.