Potty Training

I certainly did not enjoy potty training Lucy. I clearly remember a 24 hour period where we laid down the law and made her go potty on the toilet. She had lots of accidents, but I remember the beauty of bribery. That girl will do anything if the prize is good enough. At the time, Gus was a very easy baby and I thought for sure Lucy would be our more challenging child. I was wrong on that account about 1,000 times over!

Gus has been flirting with potty training for about six months. I saw the window narrowing, and decided we just needed to go for it with him. Going potty on the toilet has not been that hard, surprisingly. About 95% of the time he has a dry pull up in the morning and never has accidents during nap time. I love that. The hardest part for him has been pooping on the potty. That kid has a will of titanium. We have bribed, we have begged, and we have punished for the last two months. It wasn't until this past week that we saw some sort of progress.

Gus is very sneaky by nature. He's quiet and likes to hide and go do things on his own terms. Lucy, on the other hand, is very blatant about EVERYTHING. The girl cannot be quiet for more than a minute, tops. She talks to herself and anything around her all the time. We always knew when Lucy had to poop on the potty. There would be a lull in her conversation, we would sweep her up, and put her on the toilet, and hold her there until she was done doing her business. After about three times, she got the hang of it, and her rain boots that she had been pining away for, and she was toilet trained. Gus, leaves the room when I'm tied up with Lucy or Judson, poops, and takes off his pants. He was doing this with his diaper, which was also a big reason why we needed to potty train. Then he would try to clean it up. So he would get the wipes down, try to wipe himself, the carpet, his pants. You can only imagine the mess. Let alone the mess that a two year old creates when he tries to clean up the mess. Sigh. Big long sigh. Sometimes he would poop in his room, have wipes in our room, Lucy's room, and the bathroom. If he's gone for more than two minutes, we chase him down, because we have no idea where he is and the mess he's creating. A few weeks ago, he pooped and I found him naked from the waist down at the top of the stairs. He refused to tell me where the main poop was. All the rooms upstairs smelled nasty because he had dirty wipes scattered in all of them. He sat on my pillow two weeks ago with his poopy bottom. Last week, Dave heard something in the hall after the kids had gone to bed (I was already asleep, too), and Gus had taken off his pull up and was coloring the wall with his poop. The stories are endless. It's been a very gross few months. And our house has been on the market. The stress of those two things combined has nearly sent me 'round the bend.

So the big progress we've made is that Gus now poops in the kids bathroom on the tile. He gets rewards if he goes on the toilet. He does not get spanked, or rewarded, if he goes in the bathroom, on the tile, and does not touch it. It's worked for the past six days. He's even gone in the toilet a few times. It's still horribly gross, thank goodness for bleach, but it is such a great step in the right direction.

Part of this whole potty training a boy thing that I did not understand is that his world now evolves around his manhood. My goodness, I had no idea. It seems like I get told 50 times a day, "Big Bud (bird) have a penith. Govuh (Grover) have a penith. Wucy (Lucy) not have a penith. She a goyle (girl)." ALL THE TIME.

And the taking off of the pants! Seriously, the boy will be right behind me, I turn around and he is naked from the waist down. Just because. Apparently his parts need air or something. So NOT okay.

The other night we were putting the kids to bed and I was carrying Gus to his bed and Dave had just put Lucy in her bed. I asked Gus to say goodnight to Lucy, he looked at her and said, "Goodnight Penith," with a straight face. I looked at him and sternly whispered, "You do NOT call anyone a penis, EVER." And Lucy, was all, "Daddy, Gus called me pants. Why did he call me pants? That wasn't very nice." If she only knew. So then, last night, Lucy said, "Goodnight pants" to Gus. He was clueless, like why is she calling me pants?

No one told me that my world would be reduced to volcanic spit up (Judson still spits up 30+ times a day, the reflux medicine makes him too constipated, so we deal with it) and the CONSTANT attempt to contain little boy parts. The laundry from these two little men is a bit out of control.

I just keep telling myself we are nearly 2/3 of the way done with potty training. Only Judson is left. I'm so glad to be on this side of it!