developing

Kids! They're great. I keep being astounded by mine. Seeing them grow and develop and what happens when and comparing that is just marvelous. I've understood this a little in the past--be it from childcare type gigs or being a decade + older than some of my siblings--but it really does hit different when you're the primary caregiver, there at midnight and noon, walking along for every possible moment, every tear and laugh.

Gooseberry lost her first tooth a week or so back. Sometime when she was two or three I had an epiphany: she's the oldest, there is no "oh yeah I remember sibling's teeth falling out, this is normal"! So I made it a mission to talk about this event for a while. The first first tooth! No real comparison to be had outside her own body and seeing friends without teeth! No knowing whether it will hurt or bleed! She was, understandably, quite worried. It's been wiggling for a while, but it finally reached a point where we really wanted it out^[1] and it was ready to come out. She was readynotready. Hyped with nowhere to go. I have no idea how "Normal" the state of impasse both Goose and I experience, but there is a deadzone between "I want this" and moving the body to do so. It can be a blip or it can be a canyon and allowing Em or I or even herself to pull the tooth was an ocean, and the more any of us wanted it, the wider and deeper the ocean grew.

That tooth is out.

It took building trust and letting us wiggle it and then finally to hold it and then: one chance, no takebacks, one motion. Em knew hesitency would mean no do over. I'm a tiny envious she was the one who got to help. Catharsis is heady when the thing-to-be-overcome is large; we all have been delighting in "hey there's something missing in my mouth!!", one more marker of growth, a pile of gems.

Snapdragon's been busy too. It's continually remarkable how differently she grows. Goose's desire as an infant was to communicate, Snap's desire was to GO. This has multiple markers, from Goose's early language development to Snap's frustrated attempts to figure out how to crawl and climb and walk and her Eternal Joy of being put inbouncy chairs. Now we've got a new one that's astounding us: Snapdragon has decided she was going to start using the toilet and just kinda... is pottytrained now??

I am not sure how much you, my readers, have had to think about the process of getting a kid to poop in a hole on command instead of just letting their bowels drop that whenever and wherever. It is usually a Process. There are as many theories and methods and processes as there are children--maybe more than the number of children--and from what I've seen^[2] there are a number of factors you have to help a kid get over. The biggest ones are the awareness of body to know you have to go, the awareness of body to intentionally go, and, bizarrely, the willingness to do so and let your waste drop instead of be immediately caught by a diaper. I do not know why it is so scary for a kid to just let their poop fall but it's genuinely scary for them! Every theory/plan/whatever out there has to contend with these three things. There are lots of ways to do it, to manufacture scenarios to get a kid more aware, to comfort a kid who needs to go but is so scared they can't relax enough to actually do it, to remember to remind them to try regularly so you have fewer messes to clean up...

Snapdragon here has decided she doesn't have time for any of that. On a whim driven by her feequent decision to squat by whoever is going potty, we pulled out the training chair and within maybe two games of sitting on it nude, all fears are gone, bowels are held, diapers are dry, and she's mostly done with them. At this point she's still in diapers because we haven't found underpants small enough and we're afraid we're gonna miss and that results in a mess. She's 18 months and Will Not Be Stopped. She Will Go.

• gooseberry
• snapdragon