Potty Progress

"Oh, did you see that so-and-so posted that little so-and-so went on the potty" J would say

"That's disgusting. I hereby judge them." I would answer

"Oh, they're just excited to start potty training. It's a big deal for young parents."

"So it is. But not fit for public consumption. Especially when you post detailed analyses of the amount and composition of the waste, or even worse, photos."

(This has actually happened.)

So, I'm now a hypocrite, because I am publicly analyzing the progress of James' potty training. Good thing I've never been hypocritical up until just now.

Things are going...okay. He regularly has success in the bathroom with what we'll call (for the sake of delicacy) "number one," but so far he's only put "number two" in his training potty by accident. He prefers to do that elsewhere.

And it would be one thing if we thought he hadn't learned how to control it yet, or if he were just having accidents, but no...he is completely deliberate about what he's doing. We'll be reading in the living room and J will say "Hey, where did James go?" He won't be in his bedroom or the kitchen, and then we'll open the door to the pantry where he's standing with one arm up against the shelf and a look of intense concentration on his face.

"James," I'll ask "are you pooping?"
"Nope."
"Do you need to sit on the potty?"
"Nope."

Then he'll amble back over to his toys with a diaper sagging halfway down to his knees and attempt to go back to playing as if nothing were the matter.

We're now at a point where if we hear the pantry door move, even by a slight breeze, we both instantly jump up and make sure that no one is covertly trying to fill their pants next to the spice shelf. But this isn't just an inside problem. If we're playing outside and he disappears behind a bush, the thicket by the edge of the parking lot, or one of several wide-trunked trees we usually discover him squatting and straining with a mess in his pants.

We've tried bribing. We started with marshmallows, and then five marshmallows, then Thomas the Train stickers, cookies and at his own choosing (rather ironically) dark chocolate ice cream. I've offered to let him drive my car and to stay up past his bedtime. He thinks that all these things are agreeable, but he still won't actually use the potty when nature calls.

He doesn't really do a good job of putting "number one" in the potty when nature calls, either. He's perfectly content to pee in his diaper and run around in it, but if we forcibly sit him down on the potty he can usually manufacture a drop or two and earn himself a treat (two orange skittles, always orange, and never anything else) and a sticker for his sticker chart. (Always a green smiley face, and never any other color.) He turns beet red as he sits, then looks up with a bright expression, kicks his feet, and exclaims "I made some!" And, sure enough, there is a micro-drop of urine at the bottom of his training potty. "I need two cookies." (Cookies are skittles. Cookies are also cookies, but this doesn't bother him.)

"James," I tell him as I change another half-digested catastrophe on his changing table "You should really do this in the potty and then you could have some black ice cream and I'd let you drive my car."

"No, no fanks."

Potty Training

When J texted me that James had successfully gone on the potty, my first instinct was to text back "Great, don't put it on facebook." On the one hand, I know very well how overjoyed a parent must be that their child has learned to use the potty and has now begun the journey out of diapers and diaper-changing. On the other hand, the disgusting details of each successful potty trip are updates I don't need to know. Especially when I'm eating.

When I came home that night I clapped and hollered for James and asked him if he wanted to go again. ("No.") We'd been trying to bribe him with cookies for months, and he flatly denied every attempt to get him onto the pot voluntarily. I'm not sure what changed for him this time, but he proudly announced to me that he got "two cookies" (actually three animal crackers) when he related the events of the evening. 

The next day I was home with him, and I attempted all morning to get him onto the potty again. No luck. At J's suggestion I bought a bag of skittles at Wegmans, since they are much smaller than chocolate chip cookies and they are James' favorite candy. (And, though this was in no way related to her suggestion, J's favorite candy.) I showed them to James when I got home and I told me "Oh, I want THOSE cookies!"

I had him on my own that afternoon, and to my great excitement he finally said he'd like to sit on the potty again when I asked him for the four hundredth time. He hopped up, paused for a second, and then said "I wanna cookie." I peered into the basin to inspect the results, and couldn't see any sign he'd done anything. 

"Sorry James, you need to put some pee in the potty if you want a cookie."

No luck. He began fussing at me and begging for the iPad, and when I finally took him off the potty ten minutes later he was downright cross. It was just about suppertime, so I dumped the grumpy bear in his high chair and made him a peanut butter and jelly. He sat with one elbow up resting his head on his hand half-eating and half-smearing his sandwich all over his face. By this point I really needed to go to the bathroom, so I left the grouch alone in the kitchen.

When I entered the bathroom, I saw what I'd missed earlier. He did go to the potty.

I walked back out, and he looked up at me glumly. I knelt down and said in a soft voice "James, you did go to the potty, didn't you?" He nodded. "And Daddy didn't believe you. James, I looked but I didn't see it. Will you forgive Daddy?"

He stared back at me for a second and then his eyes started to well and his whole face scrunched up. He threw the peanut butter and jelly sandwich down and reached out, crying and begging "Daddy, Daddy, hold you! Daddy hold you!"

"Oh James, I'm so sorry. You did such a good job going on the potty, and I didn't even see it!"

"Daddy, I want GOOkie! Please gookie, Daddy." He wiped his peanut butter mouth and his runny nose on my shoulder while I retrieved the bag of skittles. 

I set him back down and pulled out four skittles. Still trembling, he looked up.

"No, I want TWO cookies."

I put down one more skittle. 

"Is that two, James?"

"Okay."

He went again (at his own asking) once more that night, and immediately asked for "cookies" again. When J pulled him out of the bath and wrapped him in a towel before bed, he looked at her, tensed for a moment, and then declared to her "I want cookie." I don't think very much of it got through the towel, but she did get a little wet.

That night we put him into bed as proud as any two parents could be. And he lay in the dark with deep fish overhead, snuggling George and Steven and looking up at his picture of "three tractors." There are actually six. He counts them 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 3!

Maybe after potty-training we'll work on counting.

Potty Humor

This post contains potty humor.

I used to get in trouble if I used potty humor, and my parents were right to discipline me swiftly and without exception for this sort of thing. If they, with five boys, had given any room to potty humor as acceptable conversation, we would have been completely unpresentable in public. (I think that we were unpresentable anyway, but at least it wasn't because of potty jokes.)

I suspect, however, that in the company of their friends, my parents indulged in copious potty anecdotes and laughs. This is what all young parents do. Young parents are stressed out, overtired, and they are constantly cleaning up the disasters their children leave inside and outside of their diapers. These disasters are both gross and funny, and when young parents get together they finally have an outlet to share their hilarious horror stories.

I remember when J and I were working at her church camp the summer before we got married and we got a lesson in this. Our conversations those days often revolved around the wedding and the life we were to have once we got married. (At that point I still needed a job of any sort.) But those weren't the only sorts of things we talked about. We were both fresh out of college, so we talked about professors, classes, and books. We debated important ideas and used lots of words that ended in "ism" or "ology." We both tried to be perfectly polite to everyone.

There weren't many other couples our age at the camp, but there was a group of a dozen or so young parents who had probably come to camp to unload full-time parenting duties of their aged 2-6 year old children. We would spend the evenings in their company, and we were flabbergasted by their conversation. We expected from this crowd, many of whom were recent seminarians, to hear more talk of "isms" and grand ideas.

All they talked about was poop.

They told diaper disaster stories, they told potty-training nightmares, they laughed at the potty language they were actively punishing, and they laughed even harder at the potty language they found too funny to punish. They also laughed at farts, making wee-wee, and all of the various names for private parts that they had to delegate as they attempted to civilize their children.

This was not a one-night conversation that happened to rabbit trail down to a silly subject. They wanted to tell poop stories, and they did it all week. Okay, I don't think they wanted to tell poop stories, but they did want to talk about their kids, and most of their kids were at that age when figuring out the potty is the most important priority.

Apparently James is approaching that age.

I was thinking about some ism or another when J, out of the blue, told me that James needed to watch me do something. (For the sake of propriety, I will call that something "number one.")

"I just read that it's a good first step for potty training. He needs to see Daddy do it before he'll want to do it himself."

I made a face, but I also knew that what J was saying made sense. James is in a particularly strong phase of doing whatever Daddy wants to do. Am I practicing? James wants to push the valves of my trumpet down too. Am I reading a book? James wants up on my lap so he can see and turn the pages. Am I writing? James needs a pen and paper right now. Am I leaving for work? James is certainly coming too. Am I taking out the trash? James will have his boots on in just a moment.

So yes, he should probably watch me do number one at some point.

"But," I said "he's already seen that."

Yes, it's true. A few months ago I really had to go as I was getting his bath ready. I REALLY had to go. And drawing a bath was not helping me to avoid thinking about it. James was standing up against the tub, but not yet walking. He was (as he still is) fascinated by the water pouring into the tub, and he was trying to reach the water that was gushing into his bath.. I figured that he'd certainly be fine to just watch the tub fill up for 30 seconds while I relieved myself. He couldn't climb in. He couldn't go anywhere. What could go wrong?

I started to "go", and then I felt something against the back of my leg. I looked down, and a tiny hand had appeared at about knee level between my legs, reaching over the toilet bowl and trying to "reach the gushing water." I gave a yell, and tried to squeeze my knees together and block him. This did not block him. It put him in a headlock. And that was how J found us. I had James' head trapped between my knees, bending backwards to keep him away, trying to keep both of our balance, and during all of this, making an attempt to "aim."

J tells me that he needs to see it again.

We tried again last night. I was ready this time, and perfectly prepared to let him be an observer but not a participant.

The experiment ended with both of us washing our hands with lots of soap.

Because James likes to be just like Daddy.