Potty Talk

It’s the end of day two of potty training. Faith has five stickers on her success chart, Rob’s been peed on twice and I need one giant glass of wine.

We started cold turkey on Saturday morning by placing Faith in her Minnie Mouse underwear, with some plastic undies over the top to minimize messes. By 7:45 a.m., we had our first accident (I say we because this is a team effort). We decided that “bum bums” aka dum dum suckers would be the reward along with a sticker chart. The pediatrician who taught the “Mastering Potty Training” class I attended recently said to shy away from food as a reward because of the obesity epidemic. If you’ve ever seen my daughter, I don’t think she’ll be adding to the obesity epidemic anytime soon, given her dad’s metabolism. Regardless, rewards weren’t exactly an issue because by 10 a.m. we had our second accident of the day. Thankfully she was riding her bike outside when it happened, so the cleanup was minimal.

From the potty class powerpoint, I knew that 20 minutes after eating is a good time to go. After lunch on Saturday I sat Faith on the pot and waited. I had very low expectations going into this, so I was shocked when I heard tinkling. I proceeded to sing a potty song I made up on the spot and do a dance that included jumping and – if I’m being honest – some air humping. When I asked Faith if she was all done, she said “Noooo.”

A little back history here…my kid is the last one to practice using the potty at daycare because she will sit there forever. When the potty professor said that sitting on the john for one minute should be considered a success, I should have ask at what point you remove said child from the throne. Anyway, I decided to let her sit there and was glad I did. About a minute later I heard a couple plops. I yanked Faith off the pot in disbelief and stared down at the most beautiful poop I’ve ever seen. More air humping ensued. Faith flushed and we waved goodbye to our favorite turd of all time.

To top it off, she asked to take a nap a half hour later. Could life get any better? We put her in a pull-up for nap time, but she woke up dry. So we tried again. She was just sitting on the pot singing songs, when all of the sudden, she stopped and I heard “tinkle tinkle” little star. A round of Bum Bums on me!

We attempted a couple trips to the potty at 5:15 and 6:15. Just as I was thinking we should try again in five minutes at 6:45, Rob was spinning Faith around in the backyard when “the sprinkler” went off.

We tried one more time before bed, but nothin doin. Faith put on a pull-up and day 1 came to a close.

Not surprisingly, she woke up wet the next day. We attempted to go again at 7:15 and 7:45. I feel like these attempts deserve more than one line because they took a lot of effort by all three of us, though uneventful. I’m not sure why we waited so long to try again, but let’s just say we missed the last two minutes of the 1st quarter of Team USA basketball. Accident number one at 8:37 a.m.

We were upstairs playing “where’d the monster go?” at 10 a.m. when I noticed Faith started making “the face.” If she were a poker player, I’d know she had a turd ace in her hand. We raced to the bathroom, and thankfully she hadn’t done the deed yet. She dropped the kids off at the pool, if ya know what I mean, and I did my most vigorous air humping to date.

There were two unsuccessful tries before nap time and then she woke up wet. Since Master Potty lady said nap time and nighttime training come later, I wasn’t worried. We did do other things over the weekend, but not much that bears mentioning. Rob got peed on again sometime around 4 o’clock and then we ate dinner.

I should mention that Faith woke up with a cold on Saturday. After a week at daycare, she brought home as many germs as she could and now we both have the sniffles, watery eyes and sore throats. In other words, my daughter is a freakin’ trooper to put up with her parents’ demands when she wasn’t feeling her best.

We attempted another trip to my loo right before dinner at 5:30 to no avail. At 6:05 p.m. it was Daddy’s turn to try. He hadn’t been a part of too many successes to this point, so it was nice for him hear pee hit the pot and do the air humping this time.

As much as we just wanted to slap a pull-up on and put her to bed at 7:45, we knew we needed to try one more time. Rob’s tickle monster/scare-it-out-of-her combo worked. Success #5. Maybe that means five glasses of wine?

There haven’t been many photo ops over the past two days, but since she’s now peeing on the potty, it’s time she learned to clean the toilet 😉