One morning I found the driver's side door of my car covered in sap. I thought parking next to a tree would have kept my car cool in the hot Missouri summer, but the sticky mess on my car hardly seemed worth the cooler temperature.
For a couple of days I drove around with the gooey mess on the driver's side of my dayglo vehicle. While parked on campus one day, a friend walked by and commented on the stain. I nodded sheepishly and said, "Yeah, I parked by a tree and it got covered in sap." I saw something flash in my friend's eyes.
Was it doubt? Was it pity?
And standing with him on the sidewalk, a little further away from my car than I was when I first noticed the sticky mess, I looked over to the driver's side door and saw the full outline of the stain for the first time. It was concentrated on the door, in a very specific spot, and then fanned out from the center with streaks extending up to the top of the driver's window and down to the tread on the tires. And when I saw this, I realized instantly that the dried liquid wasn't tree sap. It was Coke. And the splatter pattern indicated the Coke had been intentionally--even angrily--hurled at the driver's side door of a very recognizable vehicle.
I had very much misread the situation.
When I became pregnant with my second child, my husband and I sat down with a list of tasks we'd like to accomplish before the baby was born. This is a silly endeavor, of course, as it fools parents into a false sense of preparedness. There were a few predictable tasks on the list, like painting the nursery, buying diapers and car shopping. But then there were three major tasks on the list that gave me great anxiety, as they were all focused on my darling, almost-three-year-old who is naively excited to become a big sister.
1) Take away the pacifier.
2) Potty train.
3) Transition out of the crib.
These tasks would require patience, diligence, care and time. I was clear to my husband that I wanted these to roll out in phases so as not to upset our child with too much change at once. We had a nine month window to complete our tasks.
Pacifier
Our child was never truly obsessed with the pacifier, and really only ever wanted it at naps and bedtime. But around her second birthday she had become a bit of a hoarder and insisted that every pacifier she owned needed to be in the crib with her. She would suck on one and arrange the others in interesting shapes, or lay them on the mouths of the dolls that littered her crib. She liked each of them to be a different color and she cared deeply about a different one each night. I was somewhat panicked that her recent attachment to them was the result of something deeper--perhaps she was struggling with a problem at school or was fearing growing up--and so I worried taking them away from her might be a harrowing, and potentially damaging, task.
As it goes with any parent trying to take away the pacifier, my husband and I wanted to wait for the perfect moment. So we had to wait until she was over a cold. Then after her birthday. Then after she adjusted to daylight savings time. It was maddening trying to find the perfect night to strip her of the 9 pacifiers with which she had grown accustomed to sleeping.
But then, one Saturday morning we went to the zoo. She decided on that beautiful, sunny day--somewhere near the elephants--to throw the mother of all fits. So, in a moment of sheer desperation, while we were buckling her in the car as she kicked and screamed, I sternly said to her, "Ok, no binkie at nap time!"
My husband and I got in the front seat and just stared at each other. What had I done? Our child sat motionless and quiet in the backseat. We drove home in silence, all three of us fearing the impending pacifier-less nap.
At home, we laid our child in her crib and she looked up at us and asked, "Ok, so no binkie?" I looked at my husband and he nodded. "Yes…" I said less firmly than before. "No binkie." We closed her door, walked down the stairs and stood there quietly debating what we had done. Was it the right time? What should we do if she refuses to nap? Isn't sleep more important than the task? Is taking it away as a punishment going to make her think her prized possessions are collateral? Should we go buy a book about this or something? Google it, maybe?
While we silently argued at the bottom of the stairs for a solid fifteen minutes, we failed to notice that our child hadn't made a noise. We crept up the stairs, opened her door and found her sleeping soundly.
She never mentioned her pacifier again.
Potty Training
We purchased an Elmo Training Potty for our child to slowly acclimate her to the idea of using one. But instead of wanting to "use" it, she wanted to "play" with it. She constantly fiddled with the handle, which produced the sound of Elmo giggling maniacally. She put her Legos in the basin. She balanced her sippy cups on the tank. Basically, it was just another thing crowding the bathroom. We had decided that potty training would need to be a gentle process in which she would lead the endeavor. In fact, we wanted to wait a few months after taking away the pacifier before we even mentioned the words "potty training" to her. And much like our plan with the pacifier, we wanted to find the perfect time to start her with the process. Which meant we definitely needed to wait until my husband returned home from a trip he had planned overseas. So it was decided that when he returned from Beligium, we would see if she was ready.
My daughter and I drove my husband to the airport at seven in the morning in the middle of an ice storm, kissed him goodbye, double-checked that he had his passport, and drove carefully back home. The moment we walked through the front door, my child put her hands on her hips and said, "Mama, I'd like to go pee pee in the potty." Still in my snow boots, and sad from having said goodbye to my husband, I drug her Elmo Potty out of the bathroom and into the middle of the living room floor. She pulled off her snow boots, striped off her pants, unfastened her diaper and sat forcefully down on the potty. While I was taking off my scarf I heard a tiny stream of liquid hitting the plastic bin.
My child stood up, stretched out her arms in victory and exclaimed, "I did it! I did it!" I peered into the tiny potty to find it half full of my child's urine and I screamed out in excitement. My child, completely naked--while snow was falling outside the window--ran around the living room clapping and giggling.
She didn't wait until her father had returned home. She didn't wait until we deliberately started the process with her. She didn't even wait for me to take off my coat. She just decided she needed to go, got herself naked and went.
Transition out of the Crib
Having accidentally (though successfully) taken away the pacifiers, and having spontaneously (though impressively) learned to pee and poop in the potty, we felt our child was ready to transition out of the crib.
I worried about this one the most. I decided we would leave the crib in her room for the first two weeks because I thought that maybe seeing the crib would make her feel comforted during this transition. And if we had a successful first two weeks, I had another plan: I found an adorable child-sized desk and chair to replace the crib with something positive, rather than leave a vacant spot in her room, and a hole in her heart.
Her room has always had a daybed in it. I purchased one before she was born so that there would be a place for her father and me to sit (or sleep) in her nursery. I specifically chose a daybed because it has three sides and I knew that when the time came to transition, I could place it like a "C" up to the wall so that she couldn't roll off the bed.
Last Friday night, after talking about it all week, it was time for our daughter to finally sleep in her big girl bed. She came home from school immediately asking if it was bedtime. She talked all through dinner about sleeping on the bed, what blanket she wanted to use and which dolls she wanted with her. After brushing her teeth and changing into her pajamas, I put our child on the daybed. She snuggled into the pillows, had her dolls arranged closely to her body and pulled her blanket up to her chin. She looked at us and smiled. "I'm a big girl," she said, through a yawn.
We both kissed her goodnight and quietly left. When we reached the bottom of the stairs, my husband turned around to find me crying without restraint. He held me, half concerned, half laughing.
I laughed through my tears, too, because I had so clearly misread the situation.
Like the brown, sticky stain on my car door in college.
I thought what had happened was simply a natural occurrence; sap dripping from a tree. But in actuality, it was an anonymous enemy expressing anger at me. And my daughter, having just been curled up in her crib--wearing a diaper, with a pacifier in her mouth--was now tucked happily under blankets on a daybed I bought her before she was ever born. Despite how much I anticipated her growth, and how meticulously I prepared for it, I felt like I was seeing her growing outline clearly for the first time.
But I suppose it's all in how you look at it.
