BABY WEIGHT

Adventures in Potty Training, Part 1 of 3,673

The scene is Daycare.  Evan stops playing suddenly and makes his “concentrate on pooping” face.  They check his diaper and its empty.  They decide to set him on the toilet.  Then he poops.  He POOPS!

Pooooooooooop!  In the potty!

He spent the rest of the day going to the potty.  He was very successful.  I picked him up and dropped him off at home and raced to the Big-Box Baby store to get him a toilet seat.  I raced home ready to tear it from its packaging and drag it and Evan to the bathroom loudly singing some sort of made up potty song.

I arrived to find my husband and son on the couch, sleeping.  Dang it.  No potty song.

When we get home the next day I get all excited and jump up and down saying, “Wooooo!  Potty time!  YAY!  Evan, let’s go TO THE POTTY!  WOOT!”

“no”

“please?”

“no”

So I unload the dishwasher and then lean down to him and say, “You know what I was thinking Evan?  You should go use the big boy potty!”

“yes”

So we head in and I plop him down and… nothing.  And in the week since… nothing.  He spends a lot of time on the pot… just sitting there.  Normally demanding I sing Itsy Bitsy Spider or Wheels on the bus, (but only the horn part, don’t even THINK about talking about the damn wheels!  Beep! Beep! Beep!  Only!).  We’ve read books.  We’ve colored.  He sits for a while and then whines: “Eh, eh, eh… all done.”

So before bath time the other day we sat on the pot for a while.  After about 5 minutes of nothing, I get him down, wash his hands and go upstairs to get his bath going.  I let him run around the house naked. 

Not even a minute later, Evan walks upstairs and with panic in his eyes proclaims, “Uh oh!”

“What?”

“UH OH!”

“What?  Where uh oh?”

He stabs the air with his finger-pointing downstairs.  “UH OH!  HELP!”

He leads be straight to a wet spot on the carpet.  Shoot.  He did.

He crouched down and pointed it out again in case I missed it. “UH OH!”

“It’s OK.  This is the kind of stuff we do in the potty you were on not 45 seconds ago.  We just need to get it cleaned up now.”

“YES!”

So I tear off a couple of paper towels and Evan snatches them and runs to the accident.  He gets on his knees and starts to wipe it up.  I try to show him how to press down on it to soak it up and the tutorial must have been .23850 seconds too long because he shouted “NO!” and continued to do it on his own.

“Fine.”  I walked back upstairs to finish his bath. 

When it’s time I head back down to get him and he is stuffing the wet paper towels in the trash.

This entire scene boggles my brain.  He recognises an accident, comes to me for help, gets the tools to clean it up, cleans it up and then throws away the trash.  Wow.  He’s not a baby anymore.

My only hope is that he has the same reaction when and if he POOPS on the floor.  I hope he wants to clean THAT up by himself too.