August 14, 2004 - Saturday
The boys' mother and I decided that the easiest way for us to clean up and get getting to leave for home this morning would be for me to get the boys out of the cottage. So, I took them back to the freight yard we went to last summer and once again we got there just in time to see a shunter moving cars onto different tracks. Even more exciting, we saw the re-ordered freight train leave the freight yard heading in our direction and then saw it again several times as we headed home on a road running essentially parallel to the track. It was very exciting even though we just missed seeing the train go through our "home" crossing.

The caveat to this otherwise wonderful father-sons excursion was that Jeremy had an accident while we were standing watching the shunting. Of course, that's not a really big deal in the big picture for a boy of only 2.9-years-old. But it was frustrating for two reasons. The first is that he had been doing so well all week wearing only underpants, including during naps, and really seemed to be making excellent progress controlling his body! The more awkward second reason why it was discouraging is that for the first time in his life Jeremy seems to have a constritution problem. That new control of his body seems to be keeping him from pooping in the toilet and, because he doesn't want to poop in his pants, not pooing for two and three days at a time. Admittedly, Jeremy is in a different place this week (and did start asking to go home yesterday and today) and maybe that's a good reason not to worry too much. But, these sort of awkward learning issues are merciless on parents who worry about how much to encourage, discourage, urge, teach, train, ignore, etc. He's doing so well, on the one hand, but if he could just get over this hang up about pooping in the toilet...


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