so many titles to this post...

that I could not pick one:

A tale of the potty.
A girl can dream, can't she?
Poop & the potty - an epic adventure.
If you can use the iPad, you can poop in the potty.

If you have not guessed it, I speak of Sir Andrew, the five year old who is not fully potty trained. Now, all you mercy and patient types, keep your panties un-wadded. I still love him. He is fabulous. He just needs to poop in the potty. It all seems so simple on this side of the keyboard. Until you are cleaning up crap.

If you scroll through the years of blogs (yes, years of potty training, not months, not days, years), you will see that this is not a new fetish. I have successfully potty-trained three other boys. I can do this. We can do this. HE can do this. But he hasn't been. If slow and steady wins the race, he WILL be the champ, but for this instant-gratification girl, slow and steand stinks.

So, I have been recently convicted that I need to pray more for my children. God knows them. HE has a plan for them. They are his. I am just here to do my part. Somtimes my part is deep spiritual wisdom. Most times my part is to keep them alive despite themselves. But, I do know that I must train them to be on their own. With their own lives and their own wives (God bless those women, now them, I DO pray for on a more regular basis - [seriously, I do!}

But I digress. Andrew very rarely pees his pants. I think a 50 year old woman with a good sense of humor and a lot of vaginal deliveries pees herself more than Andrew. Get my drift, here? He wakes up dry and hardly EVER has a pee accident. Ok, so you have that picture. Insert here that he only poops once a day. I could go into life details about myself and family here that you do NOT want to know, but you get the picture. If you miss the one time of day that he poops, you are back to square one. The fun starts all over again. The looking for clues, asking him if he has to go, feeding him chick-fil-a and making him sit on the potty 30 minutes later kind of "all over again."

Insert into this whole story Blake whose eczema has become the bane of my existence. We now have a special spot on the couch that is covered in bath towels where Blake gets his nightly rub down of lotion that costs more than my face cream that is supposed to make me look like a teenager.

Insert Jeffrey. As I rub down Blake, I tell him how sorry I am that he is suffering and that I wish it were me and not him. Jeffrey reminds me of the power of prayer and suggests that we pray together more often for our family needs. Nothing like the mouths of our children to speak truth.

Andrew is already in bed and the other five of us gather to pray. I confess to the boys that I have not been as consistent as I would like to be in my prayer life, and I tell them that since God is the God of the Universe, he can certainly remind Andrew that he needs to take a poop BEFORE he has ruined another pair of tidy whites (which we toss if they are violated). We pray. For our family. For each of them. For Andrew to poop in the potty. We all giggle as we pray because around this boy world, just the mention of poop is funny. poop. poop. poop. (that would elicit roars of laughter here.)

So this is Thursday night. Friday = zero poop. Rats. Lost chance. But Saturday, oh, fabulous Saturday. He pooped on the potty - not once, but twice! The boys were thrilled. Their little faiths were strengthened. And I did not have to clean up poop. It was a banner day. I was happy. I was hopeful. A girl has to dream, doesn't she. Dream of a day when all poop in this house goes in the potty???

Thank you, Lord, for giving us hope. Hope in you.