Me (via text): I traumatized Clara today. Call me when you have a chance.
Tim calls me a while later.
Tim: What’s wrong?!
Lisa: Well, we got Clara’s big girl potty today in the mail, so I thought I would try it out.
Tim: Oh?! How did it go?! Did she sit on it?
Lisa: YES. She sat on it for FOREVER. She wouldn’t get off of the dumb thing. I sat there with her for 30 minutes reading the same book over and over and over again. It was awful. Plus, it’s really cold in the bathroom!
Tim: Well that sounds good, though!
Lisa: We were only sitting there because she said she had to go to the bathroom, but then she wouldn’t go! So I decided to show her how I go to the bathroom on the ‘adult’ potty. Well, I guess it worked because I was in the middle of peeing and Clara announced she had to poop, stood up, and pooped on the floor! Next to the potty!
Tim: (cracks up)
Lisa: It was so gross. I’m never doing it again. Then, we cleaned it up, washed our hands, and she wanted to sit on the darn thing again! I had to tell her no and eventually I carried her out of the bathroom while she had a tantrum and now she hates the potty.
Tim: Awww well I’m sorry you’re having a rough day.
Lisa: AND I CAN’T EVEN DRINK WINE.
Tim: Love you! Bye!
This bathroom pic is much cuter than her sitting on the potty. Also I have yet to take a pic like that because anything potty-related grosses me out and for that reason alone I may not survive being the mom of a toddler.
As a sidenote, we aren’t officially (or even unofficially) trying to potty train Clara, because I don’t think she’s ready and she’s only 18 months old. However, she has been communicating with us a lot lately that she has a dirty diaper on or that she needs to go to the bathroom, and we’re trying to show her that we understand what she’s saying, and so we go through the process of what going to the bathroom looks like.
I figure we’ll just show her there are options other than diapers and see what happens. She loves watching us go to the bathroom (ahhh sweet memories of the times I could pee alone…) and she’s absolutely fascinated by (her) poop and where it goes and she loves her new potty (when she doesn’t hate it)… but we are far, far away from actually trying to ‘train’ her and putting the cloth diapers in storage. Right now we’re trying to get her enthusiastic about the process. Or at least we were trying, before I scarred her for life.
My goal right now is to only suggest the potty if she mentions she needs to use it, and other than that I am fine with letting her ‘big girl potty’ sit in the bathroom. Or in the middle of the family room, where it is right now. (This morning she had a blast carrying it around the house. Sigh.)
Anyway, suffice it to say that I will be reading some potty training articles before the actual time comes because clearly I don’t have a clue as to what I’m doing in this area! Total potty training fail.
Wish me us luck…
