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On a fecal side note: Natalia was a gassy baby. I remember there was one night when she was constantly breaking wind, and then the dog Molly got in on it, too. So I decided, fuck it, I was going to let it fly myself. I was going to fart-icipate. We’d have a nice family fart fest. It was kind of fun, until Lynette came in and blamed me, and then didn’t appreciate when I tried to pin it on Natalia and the dog.

When it came time to potty train them, Natalia beat So

It wasn’t a perfect pull-up to potty progression. We developed a system where I had to wake her up at midnight and take her to pee so that she didn’t have an accident in bed. It was a little hit and miss. Sometimes she’d beat me to the pee-pee punch. If she was wet, I’d make Lynette handle it. I wasn’t fucking with that nonsense. But most times she’d just be in this fog, take care of business and later have no memory of it. I’d rub her head and gently coach her to take a leak, so Daddy could get to bed himself. But I didn’t know about the toilet paper part, until I was informed by Lynette that I didn’t know that there was front wiping for the ladies after a tinkle. I’m a guy, we only have one use for toilet paper. And I can’t wipe for her. That would be super weird. So I’d hand her the paper and let her do it. It was dark, because I didn’t want to wake her up and her midnight motor skills weren’t so good, so who knows how that all went, but an attempt was made and soon we were all able to go back to bed.

But those minutes waiting for her to pee felt like forever. I’d just sit there and wait in the silence and then, suddenly, it would sound like someone was using a pressure washer to clean the coping of a pool.

Let me do a little side tangent on bathroom sounds. I was at another one of my vintage races and had the bad luck of having to make a number two in the port-a-potty. I didn’t have any other option. That is a fate worse than death. We all know the smell is terrible but what I realized then was that even more disconcerting is the sound. Or lack thereof. The worst noise a man, woman or child can hear is when your ass is on that wafer-thin port-a-potty seat to do a little offloading and the dook doesn’t make the splash sound. It just sounds like you shit on a hot rock. That splash noise is comforting, as opposed to that awful “flop” sound. I’d rather hear a dentist’s drill. You get this in the airplane bathroom, too. You don’t realize how much you miss that sound when you don’t have it. This led me to envision another in my series of new apps. I call it Kerplunk. You put your earbuds in and, at the appropriate time, hit the button and it plays a nice splash sound, like dropping a charcoal briquette into a bucket of water.

Back to Natalia and her wily urethra. One time, she pulled down the pajamas and underpants like normal, and somehow the stream was off and she ended up soaking her jammies. So I was standing there holding her pee-jays, trying not to drip the wee on myself while fishing around in the dark for a clean pair. I ended up grabbing So

A couple of times the nightly pee routine did cause some tension with the wife. I came home at midnight once, after two live podcasts in the midst of an incredibly busy week. Lynette was luxuriating in a bathrobe on top of the 1,000 thread-count sheets watching Homeland. I literally didn’t even know what day it was, I had been so busy. I walked in and told her how burnt-out I was. She agreed that I needed to take a break from the road gigs, and then reminded me it was midnight and that I needed to take Natalia for a piss. I said I was too fucking tired. She said, “You’re right.” Then added, “Wait an hour, then do it.” It wasn’t malicious. It was worse. It just didn’t occur to her to do it herself. In her defense, when she saw me deflate at her suggestion and nearly pass out from exhaustion, she got the gist and took care of it herself.

As I said, Natalia beat So

And a quick tangent on gender roles. One night, we ran out of the Spiderman pull-ups. All we had were Natalia’s now no-longer-needed Dora the Explorer ones left. When we attempted to put So