Earlier this year, we finally potty trained the Little Dude.
He’d already turned 3 and we’d talked about doing it about 8 months sooner, but
life got in the way. After a whirlwind weekend of rushing him to the bathroom
every 10 minutes, he quickly got the hang of things and was eager to move on to
his next stage of life: wearing Big Boy Underpants.
I was ready, too. As his brother had arrived a few months
earlier, buying diapers for two was not ideal. And when he refused to wear even
a nighttime diaper on the second night of potty training, I praised his
independence, even as I feared for his sheets. But my son didn’t let me down,
and his sheets have happily stayed dry every night since.
But there was one little thing that I didn’t take into
account independence-wise. Even though he was regularly using the toilet for
both primary and secondary bodily functions, there was still the duty of
cleaning up the doodie after he was finished. Yes, I’m talking about wiping.
It’s a dirty subject and some even
consider it taboo, but the truth is everybody does it. (Or at least all men, as
I’ve been told women don’t poop, but that’s a story for a different day.)
The Little Dude was under the impression that toilet paper
is something to use as a way of hiding the evidence, before it’s flushed away.
Truth be told, after trying TP on him a few times, I gave up. It never quite
did the job it should have. So on one trip to the store, we picked up a packet
of Cottonelle Flushable Wipes. I didn’t know such a thing existed. I also
didn’t know that regular wipes weren’t flushable, but I learned that the hard
way. I theorized that if “baby wipes” had worked on him to that point, why stop
just because he was a “big boy” now? Then I figured if he’s a big boy and he could
use wipes, perhaps I should also explore the option, as a bigger boy with
bigger, um, needs.
Needless to say, I was thrilled to recently discover an extremely
logical system for bathroom cleanliness issues: the Cottonelle Care Routine.
Simply put, the CCR says that you should first wipe with dry toilet paper and
then have a second level of cleaning with their wet wipes. It’s like how you wash your car with soap
before you go over it a second time with a coat of wax. Doubling up leads to a
far shinier end product. The Cottonelle
Care Routine, when executed correctly, also leads to a far shinier end product.
And a cleaner feeling.
The truth is that I’ve already been a big Cottonelle fan for
many years (I’m partial to the fluffy kind in the purple package), so I was thrilled
when they asked me to spread the word about the magic of Cottonelle wipes &
their “Let’s Talk Bums” contest. As a true believer in the magic of a clean
bum, I want to encourage you to give it a shot, too. And what could make this
more fun than a contest where we talk about bathroom activities? (In a clean
way, both literally and figuratively.)
So what do you have to do? You’re going to put on your
thinking caps and come up with some Haiku, yes Haiku, about how Cottonelle
Flushable Wipes and the CCR do things like change the way you think about
cleaning yourself, your bathroom habits and other formerly taboo subjects.
Let’s keep it clean, but make them funny, witty, clever, punny and full of
entendre. You are going to post those Haiku, with the hashtags #LetsTalkBums and #Haiku on Twitter, but you can also share them on Instagram,
Facebook and all the other places you already hang out while pretending to
check your email at work.
“But Dude, I don’t remember what a Haiku is?”
Here’s a little refresher course to go along with your
refresher course (see what I did there?):
At its most simple, a haiku is a
17-syllable poem separated into three lines; the first and third lines comprise
five syllables each, and the second has seven. In order to differentiate these
lines, you can either add a line space (using your Enter key), or a “/” at the
end of lines 1 and 2.
Here’s an example of my first Haiku Tweet:
So what can you win? Well, each week a panel of experts (me
and a half dozen other Dudes) will select the best #LetsTalkBums Haiku Tweet
and its Tweeter will win a $200 Amazon gift card. Not bad, right?
At the end of the contest, one of the 7 weekly winners will
be chosen at random to win the Grand Prize of an all expenses paid trip to the
Dad 2.0 Conference in New Orleans January 30-February 1st, 2014.
That’s right, airfare, hotel and a conference pass to hang out with some
amazing people, and yours truly, can be yours for thinking of 17 clever
syllables. Make me and your 10th grade English teacher proud and
Tweet away.
There’s also going to be a Twitter Party on Monday,
September 30, 2013 from 8:00-9:00pm EST hosted by the inimitable @whithonea where they’ll be giving away an iPad
Mini and some $50 Amazon gift cards. What do you have to lose? Let’s talk bums,
and have fun doing so. Full contest rules are at wipingpoetic.com.
Here’s one more Haiku to get you in the mood:
Come join me, get clean / You
could go to New Orlean / Everybody Poops
Disclaimer: I was compensated by Kimberly Clark to
participate in this campaign, but all opinions are entirely mine, for better or
worse. (And yes, I really use Cottonelle products that I pay for.)
