I savored the sweet taste of freedom on this third day of potty training house arrest. For the first time in two long days, I actually left the house. I didn’t do anything special, but going to the grocery store without a peeing and pooping time bomb felt indulgent enough. I also made a quick stop at Toys R Us to stock up on “poop surprises.”
When I potty train, I don’t mess around with poop. It’s the wild card of potty training. I know kids who master peeing within a few days but refuse to poop in the toilet, or who poop in the toilet at home but not at school, or who pull down their pants, poop on the floor, and then pull their pants back up, or who hold in their poop for so long that they have to take laxatives. The thought of any of these scenarios makes me anxious, and I’m already an Anxious Mama, thank you very much. In my house, when a trainee lands a poop in the toilet, I go way beyond stickers.
Riley’s doing great, by the way. He’s not telling me yet when he has to go, which means I do a lot of this:
“Do you have to pee?”
“Do you have to poop?”
“Is there pee-pee in your belly”
“Do you want to try to pee?”
“Let’s pee now!”
“Is it time to sit on the potty?”
“Let’s get your poops out!”
It’s as annoying as it sounds, but he hasn’t had a single accident today (and only one yesterday), which means my Jedi Apprentice is learning well. My hope is that by the time he goes back to school on Tuesday morning (and becomes someone else’s problem for a few hours), he’ll be initiating the trips to the bathroom. We’ll see.
In the meantime, as I publish this post, there’s a fierce lightsaber battle taking place in the living room and we are still accident free. And there is more freedom in my future. We have a babysitter coming at 7:00 p.m. Happy Saturday Night!
The Runaway Mama by Jen Gregory 