In Which Stewart Finally Proves to be a Contributing Member of the Household After 5 Years of Eating our Socks and Shedding on Everything

This is Stew.

Stew and I have a rather love/hate relationship. I mean, I love him. Really I do. But he is not the easiest housemate to have. He has some serious mental health problems (I'd diagnose him as having OCD and an anxiety disorder). Stew freaks out when anything is different... chairs moved, fan blades out of the ceiling fan to be cleaned, schedules... pretty much everything in the world makes him anxious. He is absolutely obsessed with birds, rabbits and flies. Guarding our house is great, I guess, but I kind of wish he would differentiate between machines rising up and destroying their human creators and... well...things that might not be worthy of hysterical barking that wakes up the baby at 2am, such as a bird perched on our fence. Sadly, any and all things that deviate from the norm create about the same level. Stew is also a nervous eater. He needs us to see him eat for some reason; he either picks up his bowl and drags it over to us, trailing rock-like chunks of food across the whole floor, or he takes a mouth full of food and comes as close as us as possible before chewing and going back for another bite. His nervous eating is not confined to his food. He has also eaten socks, rugs, toys, books, food (that I explained to him was clearly ours because it is always sitting on the counter and not in his food bowl) and shoes. Oh, yeah, and he sheds. He loses massive quantities of hair when he is stressed out... which is always. The summer we moved, he lost so much hair that his chest and stomach were bald. So, our floor generally looks like a yeti has been rolling around on it around five minutes after I have cleaned the floor. All of these traits... not so endearing... until yesterday.

You see, we decided that Meron needs to be out of diapers before Y and M come home. According to all the books, it is time. She can stay dry for hours at a time, put her own pants on and take them off, has excellent expressive and receptive language skills, and was almost to the point of changing her own diapers. Mer and I picked out some poster board,stickers, and snazzy new underwear. There was much excitement. Day one looked a lot like this (Note the THREE!!! stickers!):

Sadly, Day Two looked a lot like this (Note the three stickers):

And, Day 3 looked a lot like this (Note the THREE stickers):

Now... we were enthusiastic, downplayed accidents and greatly rewarded success. We kept a schedule and made it into a fun game. We tried. But our sweet, wonderful, lovely, much beloved daughter:

has what some might kindly call an... independent spirit.


And we blew it. When you want Mer to do something, it is most effective if you are seemingly indifferent about the results. She is wonderful. She wants to please and to make people happy... unless she feels pushed. You see, she saw the fevered gleam in our eyes when we thought about a future free from diapers. And she dug in. I had almost decided to shelve the issue for a while, because my daughter is not someone who can be out stubborned. I think that if we really made an issue out of using the toilet, she would be attending her high school graduation in diapers.

Enter Stew.
On day four, when I asked Meron to choose whether she wanted Mama or Daddy to help her on the potty (after attempting to get her to sit on the toilet for more than 2 seconds at a time ALL DAY), she said, "No! Not you! I want my Tewie to help me!" So, I told her I thought that was a great idea. I made poor Stew come into the bathroom to help Meron.

And it worked. And we all jumped and danced around cheering, making Stewie jump around and bark in what was a reasonable facsimile of excitement. And now, after a lot of time in the bathroom with Stew and Mimi, the poster looks like this (as of bed time tonight, I think she is up to ELEVEN stickers):


So, there you have it. My dog is potty training my child. Stew, if you can pull this off, I will totally 'accidentally' drop a pound of hamburger in your bowl... and stand next to you while you eat it.