October 14, 2012 at 9:25 p.m.

You gave us 25 minutes’ notice before you made your entrance into the world, leaving no time for an epidural or, you know, a hospital gown. You wanted us to know from the start that you were going to be different. You were going to be special. You were going to be noticed.

And over the course of the last year, you have been all of that and more.

Yes, you are the second child, which means you aren’t held 22 out of the 24 hours in a day like your sister was when she was your age. Sometimes, you eat the Cheerios that have been under the table for a week. Sometimes, you get second-hand toys and second-hand clothes. Sometimes, you cry longer than I would like because someone else’s needs are coming first. Your baby book isn’t done purchased.

Yes, you are second, but only in birth order…not in my heart, not in my life. There is no competition with regards to my love for you and your sister. You are both first. And yes, there is such a thing, because I’m a mom, and all of my children, no matter how many, will be “first” to me.

You have balanced our family. You have made us whole. We have stared at you for probably what would amount to many, many hours while you have slept (is that creepy? sorry).

Charlotte, a name that makes me smile upon saying it. A name that seems sweetly Southern, yet midwestern and true. A name that connotes relaxing with a glass of apple cider on a perfect Fall day.

And let’s not forget about your middle name. Scout. The perfect Tomboy compliment to your first name. Your alter-ego. With a name like Scout…you’re going to do great things. The right things.

You have taken over 10,000,000 breaths in your first year of life, but your first breath changed me forever.

Happy birthday to you.

I know what you’re thinking.

“The one about potty training”?

Just one? I can do it in three words.

Don’t do it.

Here’s three more.

Diapers for life.

This is a fun game.

In my 3 1/2 year career as a parent, nothing has made me more angry, more frustrated, more emotional, and more ecstatic than potty training. Who knew that my daughter’s poop could drive me to drink one minute and send me into a touchdown dance the next?

Moms can literally talk about potty training anywhere. I was just at a nice, fundraising dinner with a bunch of people I had never met, and within 5 minutes of meeting this other mom, we were sharing stories about potty training. It’s like we all have the same look about us, and we can pick each other out of a crowd. I’ve discussed my daughter’s potty habits with strangers at the store, at school functions, and at weddings.

I have made a gazillion mistakes on my journey to diaper freedom, and I am here to share them with you so that you can be spared. I have gray (GRAY) hairs upon my head, and I know that at least 75% of them are from potty training. Don’t ask about the other 25%.

Mistake #1: Listening to any of these people….
The “I Potty Trained My 14 Month Old” Lady
The “I Told Her Not To Poop In Her Pants And She Didn’t” Lady
The “She Potty Trained Herself” Lady

Never, ever listen to these people. Ever. You’ll be able to pick them out right away. You will start to engage in a conversation about potty training, and before you can say, “poops her pants,” she will chuckle, smile broadly, and start “sympathetically” shaking her head while saying, “I just told my daughter not to poop or pee in her underwear, and that was that!”

Any reaction is entirely understandable at this point…laughing, crying, punching her (or yourself) in the face…it’s all fair game. However, the best (and most appropriate) thing to do would be to smile nicely, congratulate her on her “Parent of the Year Award,” and get the heck out of there. You can know, with certainty, that she is either one of two things…1) a representation of a very small (and lucky) minority of moms, or 2) lying.

Mistake #2: Trying to potty train too soon

When Noelle was a little over 2 years old, I decided it was time to potty train her because I was pregnant with Charlotte and I was not going to have two children in diapers. Did you catch how many I’s were in that sentence? Yep. It was all about me. I didn’t care to think about if Noelle was even ready to potty train. She was 2. She was ready. I was ready for her to be ready.

I had received some information about the 3 Day Method of potty training. It seemed like a miracle. You could potty train your child in 3 days, and then you could live in potty training bliss for ever and ever. I read the information (it was like a 100 page document), bought the underwear, and I decided to give it a try. I actually knew moms who did this and had success with it. Surely I could handle 3 days of potty training.

Everything was great until I realized rather quickly that Noelle had no idea that pee and poop were two different things. Even though I repeatedly said, “Tell me when you have to go potty,” and even though I took her to the potty every 15 minutes, and even though we had stickers, treats, juice, and celebrations out the wazoo, she peed on the floor probably 20 times that day before I threw in the pee-soaked towel.

I cried as I was on my hands and knees cleaning up urine all day. I thought I was the biggest failure ever because we couldn’t get this. However, the bottom line was that she wasn’t ready.

Aside from not knowing the difference between #1 and #2, Noelle was still sleeping in a crib. It made no sense to have underwear on my child while she slept when she had no physical way to get out of the crib to use the bathroom at night. I am seriously blaming this experience on pregnancy hormones, because it was honestly a really bad idea.

By day 2 of the 3 Day Method, Noelle was back in diapers and all was right with the world.

Mistake #3: Feeling shame

After the “3 Day Method” debacle, I abandoned potty training for a few months. Noelle went to a daycare where some of the kids in her class were potty training, so she started seeing other kids get up to use the bathroom. She became more interested and started to have some success with going to the potty. This was last September.

Fast forward one year later to this September, and we are finally out of Pull-Ups at night. Yes, it has taken us an entire year to “potty train.” I guess the “365 Day Method” wasn’t as marketable, but I bet it would be a lot more relatable.

Over the course of the last year, I have done everything you shouldn’t do while potty training. I have scolded, disciplined, raised my voice, and cried buckets of tears. There came a point where I was simply tired of running her to the bathroom after finding her pooping in a corner or bringing 3 sets of clothes with us everywhere we went. I’ll even say it…I was embarrassed. When she turned 3, I thought it meant I had officially failed as a mom because she still wasn’t potty trained. When she would have an accident while playing with other kids, I would feel shame, and I would even scold her. I am only admitting these things because I know that they are easy traps to fall into, and I know that I should have handled things better. You should never place pressure, shame, or blame on your child while potty training, but if you’re human, you probably will.

So what worked?

Well, I can attribute our closing of this chapter to a few things. First and most importantly, she was ready. At nearly 3 1/2, she fully understood potty training, she knew more about her body, and she could feel the urge to use the bathroom far enough in advance. We didn’t set a timer to go to the bathroom every 30 minutes. We wanted her to know when to go on her own, and finally, she did.

Secondly, I stopped making such a big deal about it. I stopped throwing parties and acting like it wasn’t normal to use the bathroom. When she went, I acknowledged it, but I didn’t bust a poop pinata or anything. We also stopped rewarding with candy (m&m’s, jelly beans, etc). We wanted her to understand that it is expected of her to use the bathroom like a big girl, and we don’t get candy when we use the bathroom as adults (even though that would be mega awesome).

With that, I stopped (most of the time) getting angry if she had an accident. I made a conscious effort to take it in stride and just move on with our day, wherever we were and whenever it happened. By evening out the highs (celebrations & rewards) and lows (shame & punishments), the whole process was much smoother.

You can’t rush it. You can’t snap your fingers and make it happen. You can’t set a deadline. You can’t force it.

You can’t change that some people potty train their infants or their super amazing kids just potty train themselves.

You can, however, ask those people if their elite potty training methods work on adults, and they will probably never go near you again.

Five years ago today, I found out that I had miscarried my first baby.

I was 24. A newlywed. A new homeowner. We had already bought a baby crib.

The weeks and months that followed slowly and painfully passed as I watched other women close to me announce pregnancies and welcome healthy babies into the world. I knew I should be happy for them, but I wasn’t. They had their babies to spite me…to hurt me…to rub them in my face. Of course that wasn’t true, but it sure felt that way.

Even though we had great support from friends and family, I felt so alone. I felt like I was wearing a flashing sign around my neck that spelled, “I just had a miscarriage,” yet people were doing all they could to avoid reading it. They’d make conversation about other, more comfortable topics. They’d give me their best advice. “It just wasn’t meant to be, ” they’d tell me. “There was probably something wrong and this was God’s way of taking care of the situation.” “This kind of thing happens all the time.” After a while, I had almost tricked myself into believing that I wasn’t pregnant long enough to be sad, and there was never a baby to mourn. I felt shame for crying myself to sleep even after months had passed.

It has taken me years to gain back what I lost in the 30 seconds it took my doctor to tell me that the baby was gone, but scars from the miscarriage still remain.

I’ve had two successful pregnancies since then, but the fear of an “empty ultrasound” doesn’t go away.

I’ve restored my faith in a loving God, but the question of “why us?” still remains.

I have two beautiful daughters to love, but I still think about the child I never got to meet.

Time has helped.

Prayer has helped.

Noelle and Charlotte have helped.

Love has helped.

Helped, but not healed.

My heart will always break for the child I never got to hold in my arms. Thank God Heaven is for real.

So, last week, I won the Suckiest Mom Award.

No really, I did.

I said something to my husband that no mother should ever say, though I have a sneaking suspicion I’m not the first who has said this…or thought this.

“Why can’t she just be normal?”

I blubbered this through tears as we left her gymnastics class 5 minutes before it was to end because she refused to participate. She stared blankly at the teacher as all of the other leotard-clad toddlers jumped and squealed and gleefully did what they were asked to do. Even her most favorite activity, the trampoline, wasn’t exciting to her, and when I told her that if we left, we may not ever come back (after we had spent the better part of the last year in that class), she said, “That’s fine, Mama.”

I drove separately that night and took the opportunity to pout and sulk and cry without my child bearing witness. I would never in a million years want my 3 year old to know I was disappointed in her, but, shamefully, I was.

It wasn’t about gymnastics. I didn’t have ambitions that she would make an Olympic team. I simply wanted her to find something she enjoyed and wanted to participate in. I wanted to see the joy on her face. I wanted to ignite a passion for something. And I’ll admit it…the little leotards were damn cute.

I called my husband to vent and that was when I asked that question. He listened while I rambled and worried and cried.

“All the other little girls in there are so happy to be there, but she could have cared less.”

“All the other little girls did what they were told and had fun doing it, but she refused.”

“All the other little girls…”

I couldn’t believe what I was saying. Since when did I care what any other children were doing but my own? Had I really just begun the vicious cycle of comparing my daughter to everyone else’s, which only breeds insecurity, competition, and tons of self-image issues in young girls? Why did her defiance of gymnastics impact me so much?

When families are expecting a child, they spend a lot of time dreaming about what the child will be like. They imagine soccer players and football players and basketball players and valedictorians and future presidents and doctors and beauty queens. They imagine popularity, social engagements, prom dates, wedding dresses. They imagine scoring the winning goal, making the graduation speech, winning the award.

I projected Noelle’s disinterest in gymnastics to mean that she would grow up to be a couch-loving, uninvolved, apathetic school-hater. She would prefer watching Japanese cartoons to going out with friends. She would complain about walking out to get the mail because it made her too tired. She would grow up to own cats. And lots of them.

She also could have just needed a nap or wanted a break. But my mind does crazy things sometimes.

This “fast-forward” vision of my daughter scared me, but what scared me more was my attitude about it. Would I love her less if she wasn’t the captain of the cheerleading squad or prom queen like I was, or if she didn’t score the winning basket or wasn’t valedictorian like her father? Would I be disappointed in her? Would I be ashamed? Would I not support her interests or still encourage her to be the best version of herself, whoever that may be? Would I not be as proud to be her mom?

The answer, the true answer, to all of those questions is absolutely not. I’m her mama. I will love her (and Charlotte, and any other future children) forever with no conditions. She will grow up to do amazing things, be them what society defines as amazing or simply what are amazing things to me.

She may or may not be a star athlete, but I really hope she just enjoys keeping herself healthy and active. She may or may not be valedictorian, but I really hope she just enjoys learning and challenging her mind.
She may or may not be popular, but I really hope she’s just loving and compassionate to other people.
She may or may not be prom queen, but I really hope she just knows how beautiful she is, inside and out.

When my family would watch sports together, my dad and I would sometimes get wrapped up in the competition and make snide remarks about other players. My mom would always say, “Remember, he’s someone’s son.”

The last kid off the bench, the one who missed the field goal, the one who scored for the other team, the one who was 5th runner-up, they are all someone’s child.

And the curly-haired, sometimes shy, sometimes bossy, always curious, always amazing, disinterested gymnast…well, she’s mine.