Darth Spoon Revisited

Eight years ago, I was living in a cute little white house south of campus with my sister and two delightful roommates; we threw a Halloween party. It was . . . A . . . wait for it . . . MAZING! Though not particularly well attended.

But for those of us who did choose wisely and attend, we had a blast! And were privileged to enjoy the interpretive dance stylings of . . . Darth Spoon.

Now for the first time ever, Darth Spoon's interpretive dance is available online! Enjoy. :)

I know, I know, the video isn't that great. It's too dark. So all you can see are the sith lord's glowing light saber spoons. AAAAAND there's no sound. But you've got an imagination, so use it. But I'll help you out with some additional photographs of the infamous (and deadly) Darth Spoon:

Don't worry. I can feel your shock and awe from here. Again, the photos aren't the best. And it doesn't help that the sith lord's costume is entirely black, but it was authentically crafted from a pattern similar to this:

Training Underpants

I am preparing to really potty train Charlie. I say "really" because while I've been encouraging Charlie to various degrees over the last year or so to use the toilet, we haven't really done anything about it. And I'm tired of buying diapers for two children. And I'm tired of wiping sh!t off two bums (well three if you include mine, but it's not like I want anyone else doing that for me)--granted, the sh!t wiping will continue into the potting training for a bit, but once it all gets started there is hope in sight!

Four or five months ago, we had a "potty training day," and yes it only lasted one day. I did the whole give-the-kid-as-much-to-drink-as-they'll-take thing, and in doing that, everyone I talked to said you're then supposed to put the kid on the toilet every 10 minutes. That seemed excessive to me. I was wrong. I was going for every 15, but I checked the time with each accident and it was really close to every 10.

To make it all worse, all three of Charlie's accidents happened while I was attempting to nurse Emmett. I learned that de-latching a suckling infant, putting them in a safe place while they scream at you for de-latching them, covering yourself up in an attempt at modesty in front of your toddler, and running to said toddler's aid to prevent them from peeing all over the place just takes too long. This potty training day made me immediately regret not trying to potty train Charlie before Emmett was born.

Honestly, I'm not convinced that if I had tried to potty train Charlie before Emmett's birth that it would have been successful. But I wish I would have at least tried.

Also, holy cow my kid can pee a lot! I learned that I do not have enough spare towels to handle the massive quantities of pee that can leak from my kid's body every 10 minutes.

So, now that I've stopped nursing Emmett, I am ready to potty train Charlie in force.

And in order to save my few towels from repeated urine soakings, I have made Charlie some extra-absorbent training underpants. In my mind, these are the cloth diaper take on pull-ups--which I am not willing to pay for.

I got the idea off Pinterest, and you can see the original blog tutorial here. I followed that tutorial with only one deviation: I lengthened both my flannel and PUL layers so both went from waistband to waistband.

Before I got started, I washed the flannel, PUL, and Gerber training pants. This ended up being pretty important because my flannel actual shrank quite a bit even though I followed the washing instructions carefully. Then I began the project by tracing the area of the training pants that I wanted to be reinforced. I used a marker and wax paper.

Then I cut four layers of flannel for every one layer of PUL. I pinned the flannel to the inside and sewed using a zig-zag stitch.

I pinned the PUL to the outside and sewed using a zig-zag stitch.

And done! It's really quite easy, and I think any beginner sewer could make these successfully. I find it to be a bit time consuming, though. My first one took me about two hours--I am a perfectionist so I go slow anyway, but I am getting quicker.

My plan is to make a total of six of these for Charlie, and so far four are complete.

I was able to get all the fabric at a discount: I got the flannel on sale for 60% off and I used a 50% off coupon for the PUL--which is a good thing since it's $15 per yard! Including the cost of the Gerber training pants I used, I made these underpants for about $4 each. I'm not going to any lengths to be exact because I will have a lot of both fabric left over, but I'm confident that $4 each is a good approximation. (The blogger from the tutorial I mentioned above sells reinforced PUL training pants on her Etsy shop for $35 for a set of three.)

Charlie has already had some accidents in these. The first accident was lots of pee. Lots. The underpants were thoroughly soaked. BUT . . . no puddle on the floor. Huzzah! AND . . . only a little leaked through to his shorts. Huzzah again!

I'm excited. :)

With these in hand, I'm more optimistic about potty training. I feel like I'll have a lot less mess to clean up when Charlie does have accidents. And maybe with less mess to clean up, I'll be able to be more patient with him throughout the whole process. After all, I'd like potty training to be as pleasant an experience as possible for everyone.