Potty Training Chronicles

We are so tired of poop. Sick of it. For the past 14 months, we have been changing two boys' diapers. That's over 4000 diapers. In fact Sam had this insight a few weeks ago:

Sam: "Mom, what smells like butt?"
Me: "I don't know."
Sam: "I think it's you because you spend so much time around Mikey's butt."

We've tried potty training a bit. Our potty-training expert friend says that with determined kids, you can either potty train (oh, excuse me; to be politically correct, I should be saying that our child is potty learning right now) before they turn 2 or after 3-1/2. In between, they are asserting their independence and there's nothing you can do. We have tried several times, but it just frustrates us.

Eric is a very determined, active, masculine child--full of energy and testosterone, and quite frankly, potty training takes a lot more work than changing the diapers.

But something snapped and we decided that we are going to give it another try now. So we were in Target last Saturday and one of the techniques is to let your child choose their own underwear. Well, we have very cool underwear left over from when Sam was that size--cars, diego, batman, mickey mouse, etc. so I hadn't really felt that I needed to do that. But we were near the underwear aisle, so we strolled down it.

Me: "Hey Eric. Do you want some cool new underwear?"
Eric (pointing): "I want those."

Sam and I looked at each other and Sam and I both started showing him other options. Don't you want the Superhero ones? Look at the awesome Toy Story underpants! Aren't these Diego ones coooool?

Nope. Eric only wanted Tinkerbell. The ones with frilly edges. Now, knowing what a boy he is, this was really funny to us. I called Ivan and asked him how he felt about his son wearing girl's underwear. He said, "I don't care as long as he stops wearing diapers." So we put them in the cart and kept going. Eager to enforce the idea that he would not be wearing diapers, I said to Eric, "Now Eric, you're going to want to make sure that you always go in the potty so that you can keep your Tinkerbell panties, excuse me, Tinkerbell underwear nice and clean."

Did it work like a charm? Nope. The next day, we put them on and he peed in them. The next day, we put some more on and he pooped in them. He peed in the next pair. "Oh, Eric," we'd say each time, "that is so sad that your Tinkerbell underwear are dirty." Later that night he peed again. "Oh Eric. That is so sad that they are all wet." "No," he said. "It is NOT sad."

So today, we were off to Target again, to try to find something to bribe him with. We got some Squinkys (I had never seen them before). They are tiny dolls/accessories/animals that come in little plastic balls that are in a gumball machine type thing. I figured this would be good because he could get a new one every time he went pee. But then we hit the jackpot. Target has this area with retro toys and we came across a dragon jack-in-the-box. He couldn't put it down!

Since we got home, he went pee in the potty 3 times (and kept his underpants clean) so that he could play with the dragon. I'm just hoping he gets the potty thing down before the novelty of the dragon wears off.

Oh, and we're starting to potty train Mikey now too. We're not going to go through two more years of diapers. Since Mikey is as compliant as he ever will be (which is not too compliant as we had an inkling since it took so long for him to be born), we figured we'd better get it done before the 18 month mark. Maybe he'll even be potty trained before Eric.