Two words: Potty Training

Have I mentioned that my son is totally using the potty?

Aw, yeeeeah!

He started doing it a few weeks ago and yes, I am totally taking credit where it is undue. Let's face it, this accomplishment has little to do with me and much to do with that uberpursuasive "Big Boys Use The Potty" book but so far things have gone surprisingly smoothly. We haven't braved underwear yet - he still gets wet overnight or if he's watching a particularly compelling Sesame Street - but I'd say a good 80% of the time he keeps things dry.

(Okay, I just realized that the biggest thing in my life is tallying up how many times my child has pooped in a plastic chair. This is what it has come to, friends.)

Unfortunately I made the mistake of crowing about Owen's potty prowess in front of another mother who promptly informed me that I was doing it all wrong. Apparently my technique - asking him if he needed to potty, waiting for the inevitable "nope!", leading him to the potty anyway, giving him a book and some privacy - is so last decade. Today's mommies let the child lead. In other words, they let him run around naked and wait until he pees. Or as Other Mother put it, "He'll never learn to go if you keep telling him when to."

Wait, he'll never learn to pee on his own? Ever? He'll be sitting in the dorm room waiting for my call so he knows when to urinate? I call bullshit. Don't get me wrong, I get the theory behind the technique, but I just don't have it in me to spend all day, every day cleaning up puddles of baby pee. (Or worse.) The way I see it, my job is to make the potty a nonthreatening, user-friendly experience. After that, it's just a matter of letting him learn.

Parents, where do you stand on all this? Did anybody go the au natural route? Please say yes. (Can't wait to hear those stories...)

The one where I pee on a stick.

I know that there are people in this world who get pregnant easily. MTV has procured enough knocked up high school kids to produce two full seasons of "16 and Pregnant." Michelle Duggar is getting ready to pop out her 19th kid. I know a woman who got pregnant while taking the pill. But apparently it takes an act of friggin' Congress to get me an infant.

Did I mention that we want another kid? I'm sure it comes as a surprise, given my affection for grumbling and harrumphing, but we do. And so far it's going about as well as you'd expect, assuming you were expecting nothing. I'd always heard that if you got pregnant once, your body knew what to do. Yeah... no. It's not like I'm new to the game. I know all about ovulation and charts and blah and blah so why no baby? To add insult to injury, my set-your-watch-by-it cycle decided to come a week early so I'm getting my hormone levels checked on Tuesday to make sure I'm not entering early menopause, which might be the least sexy sentence I've ever typed.

All this is a long-winded way of apologizing for not being around much. It's embarrassing to whine about wanting another child. It's a waste of worry to fear that I'm past my prime so I've been ignoring this blog and self-medicating with leftover Easter candy and Gilmore Girls. (I'm up the the Jess years.) I feel boring and a little blue and who wants to read about that? But I promise to snap out of it and start yelping about potty training soon, because nothing says love like an entry about poop.