Potty Party Day 2

Day 2: Definitely a success.

We managed to go all day long without any accidents. Victory #1. In the early morning Josiah made a tiny sprinkle, but as he did I made the classic "ehh ehh" sound that is universal "no" for kids and dogs, and he very willingly stopped and sat on the potty to complete the full job. We got three whole poops in the potty, and I was incredibly grateful for that. When it came time for poop #3, Josiah let out a small poot. I told him he needed to poop in the potty, but I sat him down on the toilet and he threw a fit. He kept telling me, "no, no!" I contemplated my options with the full weight of the previous day in my mind. I had let him up too soon then. I decided to let him up on the condition that I didn't want him to have a traumatic potty experience and begin to protest using the potty. I watched him like a hawk, and when he paused with a look of concentration, I rushed him to the potty again. He made a small effort to go and then declared, "no" and stood up. I continued to watch him with increasing vigilance. When he crawled up on his bed I was brooding in my head with the "if you poop on that bed..." thoughts. He stood up and let out a second poot. I looked him straight in the eyes and sternly said, "Go sit on your potty and go poo-poo!" He looked back at me with a bit of bewilderment that said, "OH, you're right, I DO need to go!" He hopped down and ran to his potty and promptly graced the pot with poop #3.

As the afternoon went on I cautiously took him outside with loose shorts on, as the training system says to do. We stayed outside for 30 minutes without an accident. I was very proud. I told him, "If you need to go pee-pee we take our shorts OFF." I think the training plan would have him pee in a potty, but I figure that as long as we are outside, I am not against teaching him to pee just about anywhere, as long as the clothing is free and clear. We didn't encounter that problem, and we successfully came back inside with dry shorts. After that I had him go potty before his nap and he woke up with a dry diaper. Victory #2.

When Jonathan came home he promised to take Josiah on a bike ride. That is something they have been doing regularly together for the last couple of weeks, and Josiah LOVES being able to ride on the back of Daddy's bike. For the record, he can't really pronounceate any of the sounds in the word bike, so he has come up with his own word that sounds something like, "dat." Don't be confused, it isn't "that;" it is very distinctly "bike." Anyway, we made Josiah pee before we would put his shoes on--his cue he was getting to go. He did, and we got him ready. They headed out. An hour and 15 minutes later I got a call from Jonathan that they had biked all the way to Stone Mountain from our house, and Josiah was currently running around an empty parking lot naked from the waist down, refusing to go pee-pee. Jonathan gave him some more water, took him to the playground for a bit, and tried again. Still, he wouldn't go. I ended up picking them up a few miles from our house just before dark, and I took a potty with me, hoping Josiah would go before getting in the car seat. Once again, he refused. We made it home safely, and within 10 minutes of being home he showed signs of needing to go. I made him sit on the potty and he went. This was a huge success in my eyes, as he was able to not go potty for several hours.

Everything was going well until I fed Josiah his dinner while I was trying to prepare dinner for Jonathan and myself. I was spot checking Josiah to make sure he didn't need to go pee-pee. He pushed a chair over to the pantry so he could identify some item to beg for despite his fully tummy (this is a bad habit he has developed as of late). He brought a bag of cookies and sat them at my feet before heading off to search out Jonathan in the office. I came into the office and smelled poop. I looked at Josiah's leg and saw a distinct skid mark where SOMETHING had bumped into it on the way down. In that very moment I felt like I had a dog. We knew there was poop somewhere and now we had to find it. I retraced his steps to the kitchen, where I found a nice lump of Josiah waste in the chair that was pushed up to the pantry. Yuck. Jonathan cleared off what he could and I pulled out the Bissell Little Green. Before clearing the evidence we made Josiah (very much like a dog) look at his mistake while we somberly declared, "uh oh. Poo-poo doesn't go in the chair. It goes in the potty." To reinforce the learning we then asked him, "Josiah, where does poo-poo go?" He replied by pointing at the stand-alone potty and saying, "Poo-poo!" So, in a round about way...Victory #3. He can identify the ideal location for poo-poo.

Now if we can only get him to initiate this himself. On to Day 3...