Corey has insisted, again, that Sophia be toilet trained. Sure... she's almost 4 years old. Yeah, it seems like it should be about time... And yes, here in a Brazil is an ideal circumstance to try to force this upon her, cause we don't have carpets and so the clean up is quicker and easier than it has been during past years of toddler training. But, heaven help me, if there is anything I can do to make this little girl care at ALL, please give me the inspiration. She doesn't give a darn and I don't know how to make her care and it makes me want to scream when I hear the "Sophi pee'd" announcement ringing through the house. But
I am pretty well trained, if that's worth anything. I've got this internal alarm that goes off when it's probably time for her to go. Saturday I asked Corey if he'd helped her go or if she'd come to him to tell her she'd wet her pants, he said no and no, and so I knew I better go check if I could catch her in time or if I had a mess to clean up, but shame on me, I decided to complete the task at hand and I finished changed Natalie's diaper first, and those few seconds cost me. As I'm finishing up with Natalie, Sophi comes in and says "I pee!" Yay for me, and I curse the whole stupid situation again.
I did see this giant pink unicorn at Sam's Club this morning. Sophi's been talking about how she wants a small pink unicorn for her birthday, but I'd get her this if she'd care about using the toilet.
Sophi, I don't even care that it costs $139 dollars, I'd buy it for you if it means we can move beyond this phase of your child development. (and just kidding, that's reais, not dollars, so it's really only like $50 bucks.) It's as big as
Lily's Bunky Bunky (first picture there), and it might be tricky to get it on the plane, but I wouldn't mind buying it even if we ended up leaving it here, if it would mean that you'd be trained. I can dream I guess...
Today I'm particularly sensitive to potty issues because we had two of our toilets flood
up from the floor. We have 9 toilets in this house - I don't think I've mentioned that before. Yes, 9 toilets. Three of them are outside by the back bbq area, then there is one off of each of the 4 bedrooms, then another one by the dining room and one by this other front room (that has mold issues and is kinda the dumping ground for stuff in this house that isn't ours or that is useless to us.) So, the toilet by the dining room... here it is:
This is one that I hadn't had the pleasure of using much. But when I did discover it, I noticed that there was a yucky looking towel around the base of it. This week I moved the towel and washed it and maybe that was a mistake, cause on Saturday, after helping Sophi use it, I flushed it and then learned that it was clogged cause the water doesn't go down, and then all of a sudden water is all over the floor coming up from around the base of the toilet. I spent a while cleaning it up and not liking toilets again. Later in the day I go over to the other toilet which I thought was one of the last issue and worry free toilets I had, and that one had water all over the floor too.
What's up with that? I clean it up, use it, flush it, it floods on the floor from the base a little again. Not hard to clean up cause there is a drain on the floor (see it there beneath the sink). But then I wonder... since this base flooding thing is the same thing as happened to the other one, I better go check on that to see if there is a strange connection between these toilets, since they are connected closely to each other in the house. I go to look and lo and behold, that one is flooded again too. With two plungers in hand I go back and forth and do some light experimenting and discover that if you flush one and they both flood. Yay for me. I got towels and the squeege and cleaned it up for a bit, then had to excuse myself for a walk.
The Killers helped me get my pent up frustration out for an hour, as I sang to myself "
Smile like you mean it" and "
you were battle born!" and "
What are you afraid of? and what are you made of?". Yes, I was born to face these toilet battles! I'm not afraid, I'll smile and I'll look like I mean it. After that hour of self talk, I was able to calmly finish cleaning it up when I came back.
Up until today, we've had plenty of clogged toilets but not flooding over or under like this. I'm just sick of it all. Right now I'd like no more Sophi pee on the floor, no more underwear and pants that need an emergency wash, no more clogged toilets, and no more flooding toilets. I'm not going to pay to get them fixed - it appears these toilets had this problem before (hence the towel around the by the dining room one), so I'll just put that toilet out of commission and with paper and tape make a sign that informs the masses. There are others you can use. We'll just shut them down one by one if needed, hopefully we'll survive til we leave in July. Here's our toilet, and the plunger handy in the duvet. We don't use the duvet. The issue our toilet has is that the button won't flush it, so you have to take off the lid to reach the button. So we always get to see into our toilet tank.
So last thing - clogged toilets... I bet I've plunged toilets well over 20 times this past month. And I wish that I had a decent plunger to use. So it seems to be a general rule here that you don't flush toilet paper, and we've followed that pretty well. But I don't think toilet paper should be a big deal - these toilets can barely handle poop. It seems like anytime anyone goes #2, it clogs the toilet and someone will come announce it to me, cause we all know that no one else knows how to fix clogged toilets except mom. (happy mother's day) AND compound that with the flooding today, hence this rant. Not the most exciting post or information to blog about, but this is part of our experience here, so I shall document it. I'm sure it will be one of my sour memories of this adventure that I'll force out of my mind once we return and get used to the wonderful indoor plumbing of the blessed US of A. And I hope Natalie never needs to be potty trained.
