Our Potty Training Plight

Ohhhh this little boy. He is a killer. A cute killer. C.K.

So. At the beginning of September, we were at church, and Sadie had to go potty. So I went to take her, and Micah pitched a fit, so I took him along, too. We were all in the handicapped stall, because that's the only one that fit all three of us.

Micah watched Sadie pee, and then he was all, "Potty? Me? Potty?"

"You want to go potty?"

A nod.

"Are you sure??"

A nod.

"Okayyyyy..."

So I undid his pants and diapie, and put him on the toilet, fully expecting him to sit there for .2 seconds before screaming to get off, but he totally peed. Right then and there.

I was like, oh my gosh. He's ready for potty training! He's not even 2 1/2 yet! Sweet! Let's do this thing!!!

The next day, I took him to the bathroom every half an hour. He peed every time. It was awesome. I had him be naked from the waist down - this has worked magic with Dylan and Sadie. For some reason, they just didn't want to pee out in the open air. They had no problem peeing on undies or pullups or pants, but they didn't want their peeing exposed.

So we did this for two weeks with very few accidents. But Micah wouldn't ever tell me that he had to go, nor did he make any effort to head to the bathroom himself. I talked to Mom about it, and she was like, "He needs to have that urgency feeling. You need to take him less often so he can recognize the urgency feeling." So I started only taking him every two hours, and we still did the naked thing.

The kid peed all over my house. He obviously has NO problem peeing in the open air. No problem at all. He peed on my couch. My carpet. His bed. His carpet in his room. The kitchen chair. His sister's floor. It was so traumatic for me. I really, really hate cleaning up excrement. This is why I don't have a dog.

Mom's BFF, Cheryl, was like, "Just give it 72 hours. I call it the 72 hour/72 dollar training. It will only take 72 hours, and then when he's trained, you pay $72 to get your carpets cleaned." I fought the good fight, but after two weeks of Pee Mania, I had HAD it.

I was talking to Megs, and she was like, "Put him in undies and pants. That will provide more of a barrier between him and your couches and carpets, yet he'll still get that uncomfortable wet feeling and the urgency feeling." Good call, Megs.

So we did that. At first, he would be wet for a long time and not tell me, nor have any problems with it. But slowly, as the weeks have passed, he has been telling me that he is wet - after he has already wet his pants, of course. Still no telling me BEFORE the fact.

Here's the thing. He doesn't have that many pants and undies, compared to how often he has accidents. Quite often, we run out of clothing for him to wear. Which turns into a problem if we have to go anywhere. So here's what we do now. We do the he-pees-all-over-his-undies-and-pants thing, going through several sets of undies and pants in the day. When there's only one pair of clean, dry pants left, I put him in a diaper for the rest of the day while I catch up on laundry. I still take him to the potty every two hours, and he pees on demand. But there's a diaper there to catch any more accidents until we have more clean pants available.

He has obviously pooped in his undies a few times, which makes me sooo mad. It's the grossest thing ever. Two-year-old poop is like man poop. None of this cute, baby, mustard-seed poop. We're talking hard-core, nasty, adult-sized poop. One time, I was so upset about it that I took him outside (this is when it was still really warm outside) and sprayed his bare butt with the hose. That traumatized him, but not enough for him to stop doing it. I tried doing cold showers for awhile on him, too, but it's too hard for me to wrestle him in to the shower, and he fights so hard that he gets poop pieces on me. Which is really horrible. Plus, I've heard that if you make it a traumatizing thing, they won't successfully potty train.

So I'm trying to make it a pleasant experience. I give him a piece of candy every time he goes pee for me. He tries to pull a fast one on me all the time. He'll ask for the candy first, and then not pee. So now I don't give him the candy until he pees.

Lately, he'll do this thing where he'll pee a little bit, and I'm like, "Are you done?"

And he's like, "Yeah." So then I give him a candy. And then he's like, "Oh. Finish. Finish."

I'm like, "You need to finish?"

"Yeah." So he'll get on, pee a little bit more, and then go, "Candy?" Like, "I peed again. I should get a candy every time."

I'm like, "No, dude. You get one candy for this whole series of small pees." He screams at me and tries to hit me, and I tell him not to hit, and he tries again, and I put him in time out for two minutes, and he screams the whole time....

Life is special with him.

We've basically plateaued. We sure aren't moving forward, but I'm also not interested in going backwards, you know? He can pee on demand. So we'll do this system for now, until I'm ready to be more hard core. I hardly have time to pee myself, much less teach Micah how. I'm still really busy with all of these kiddos. So that's that. He really is still so young. He's 2 1/2 years old today, actually. And he's a bit immature for his age. So I won't get really mad about this until he's older. I guess. I have a friend whose four-year-old is still not training. Yikes. Bikes. And I have a couple of other friends whose kids took an entire year to potty train. I feel a little bit better when I hear these things.