Thursday, September 25, 2008

How to Potty Train Your Son in a Day

Greg has been showing a lot of interest in using the potty lately which made me think he's ready to give it a go. We decided to hold off until we got back from Mississippi and then see if he was still interested. Well he came back as excited as ever so I thought Great! lets go for it! Here's my simple plan to potty train your child in a day

Day 1

1. Take him to the store and pick out really cool underwear. Very exciting!

2. Take them home and try them all on. Make sure you pick him up in front of a mirror in each pair so he can see how great his bum looks with Thomas the Train or Lightening McQueen on it. Assume that his shrieking like an excited girl at a Jonas Brothers concert means he just can't wait to use the potty.

3. Take him potty, cheer wildly for tiny trickle. Repeat over and over for an hour.

4. Fold up a towel on his seat in the stroller and tell him its just in case his pee comes out while we're on a walk. Remind him, your pee goes in the potty. When I got home Greg jumped out excitedly and yelled "mama I peed on the washclof!", beaming. Umm I think he doesn't get it.

5. Change his clothes, take him potty, cheer, rewards.

6. Repeat, repeat, repeat.

7. Suggest after outfit after outfit that maybe he should take a nap with his diaper. Greg refuses and I cave. To my surprise he wakes up dry. Ten minutes later he comes out with noticabely wet underwear which he swears are dry. When I question him he finally says "Yeah I peed the floor in my woom" then runs off leaving his underwear behind.

8. By this point I figured what the heck I'll let him run naked for a while, he's just peeing all over anyways.

9. Now we really had to go somewhere so I tackled him down to dress him. Imagine my joy to find some tell tale smears on his naked bum. Our conversation went something like this

"Um Greggers did you poop?"

"Yeah" very non-chalantly

"Where"

"Over dere"

"Where over there"

"On the floor"

"Where on the floor"

"Umm under the table I tink"

Twenty minutes of hands and knees searching revealed nothing. Hopefully that means he was just saying stuff and those smears meant he stopped in his tracks, but I'm a little afraid of a surprise later.

10. At this point in the day, when he ran from me holding his underwear yelling he wanted a diaper, I gladly gave him one. Which he wore the rest of the day.



Day 2

1. Get child up put on clean diaper.



In the end Dave and I came to the conclusion that maybe the underwear are just some new item of character clothing to wear and peeing in the potty is something fun to do sometimes. I'm pretty sure in his head those underwear were just like a diaper waiting to be used then replaced.

Little Cherubs

The other day Greg and Hailey asked if I would get down this huge box of train tracks for them to play with. I said sure, as soon as the boys room is picked up so you can set the train up in there. They were back in record time with the room reportedly clean as can be. As I walked down the hall, they ran ahead of me and lined up next to each other in front of Greg's bed beaming like the Von Trapp children with their shiny, little, blond heads. Thinking to myself "how sweet. They're so proud of their cleaning job," I start to get down the train set all the while telling them what a great job they did. Then out of the corner of my eye I see the real reason for their cherubic smiles and strategic line up. They've piled every single toy from the floor (and there was a lot) on Greg's bed and tried to block the giant pile with their bodies. No wonder it got done so quickly. Gotta give them points for trying I guess. I helped them clean it up right, and got them the trains. Meanwhile I learned that if your children come to you smiling like the Chesire cat, there's probably a reason and it's not always good.