Okay, remember how I was going to be all YAY POTTY TRAINING this month? Uhm, yeah… well, that didn’t work out. We tried…sort of. We’ve taken many opportunities to make asses of ourselves, sing silly songs, read the Elmo potty book in an effort to get him pumped about going potty. He’s not buying what we’re trying to sell.
So yeah, yeah, I know. DON’T PUSH IT. I hear you. I’m not trying to traumatize the kid through acts of desperation, though I’ve tried bribing SEVERAL times with no luck. Thing is, if I can get him to go on the potty just once, then I can give him something so magical and off limits any other time, like a big bowl of ice cream… or a lighter, and then he’d understand the power he can wield by going potty. Until then, though, he just doesn’t get it. I can’t give him these magical things *before* he goes potty. This isn’t like a promissory note situation. No. I need actual results to reward first. I feel like this is a very “chicken or the egg” scenario. /excuses
But the kid still doesn’t like poop on his butt. He still likes to undo his diaper whenever he poops instead of doing the logical thing, which would be to use his super secret language that he KNOWS I understand to tell me to change his diaper.
Tonight I chased him around the living room and saw him stop to pick something up. I caught his hand halfway to his mouth and intercepted what I THOUGHT was a pretty big yogurt covered raisin that had the yogurt sucked off of it.
“What is that?” I said as I held it in a pincer grasp and brought it closer to my eyes. As it came in to focus I noticed the texture and color wasn’t so much like that of a raisin but like that of a ball of SHIT.
I shrieked as I threw it down and simultaneously swept Kendall away from it. “OH MY GOD, OH MY GOD, EWWWWWWW! SCOTT!”
The kid almost ate his own poop tonight. Okay, to be honest I’m not entirely sure that he didn’t. He could have got to another turdlet without me knowing it, although I’m hopeful the dogs took care of the situation before he could, considering they both lunged at the one I threw back on the ground and Scott had to fight them off of it.
So then I change his diaper, and he mangaes to get away from me before I could put his pants on. Oh well, I figured I’d let him run around for a little bit with just a diaper. I was too tired to fight it. Minutes later I hear “Uh oh,” which almost never means something accidental and almost always means he did something he shouldn’t have on purpose.
He’s taken his diaper off and is running around the house naked, with the exception of the diaper liner stuck between his crack, which he eventually catches a glimpse of out the corner of his eye, reaches around and yanks it out, leaving it on the kitchen floor. He proceeds to runs around the house, poop falling out of him at every turn. By the time we navigate our way through the minefield that is our living room to catch him and get him seated on the big boy potty, he’s completely emptied his system, and laughing like a mad man.
So I spend the evening picking up poop, chasing a naked toddler, talking about Elmo and potties, and I wonder just how the hell we will ever even get around to getting pregnant again because NONE OF THIS is 1. putting me in “the mood” or 2. making me think how fun it will be to do this all over again.
Kendall is 5 days shy of 21 months old, and I think this is his genius plot to make sure he’s an only child
35 comments
First off, the imagery from ‘turdlet’ is fantastic. Second, I laughed so hard I had to read your post out to my husband. It was disgusting and entertaining all at once. Just glad I didn’t have to live it.
my dogs are turd eaters, too. and i am totally el oh elling at this whole post, but not AT you because this is only about 6 months away for me and i’d hate for you to laugh at ME when Harper takes a duece all over MY kitchen.
stay strong sisterfriend.
Hey Jill…
I am right there with you girl! My son was 4 years old when he potty trained!! Now, he peed on the potty since 2 1/2, but pooping, a whole other story! It was horrifying! I swore I was going to have to send him to college with a box of Pull-up’s in his suitcase! (catching the last tear falling from my face), I used to sit next to him by the toilet and cry, and beg, bribe and yell. Nadda, zip, he would just sit there and shake his head N-O! The docotr kept telling me not to push him, hel will go when HE is good and ready. Well, when the fuck is that going to be, when he pop’s the question to his girlfriend? I knew I had a timelimit, becuae school starts in the fall, and they wouldn’t let me sign him up if he wasn’t potty trained (hmmmfff!) Soo, one day, I took him in the bathroom and showed him that there is nothing to be afraid of. He had a fear of falling in a swirling down the hole! Conversation between me and my son:
Me: Do you see that hole?
Nico: Yeah.
Me: That hole is only big enough for your poop and pee to go down, you won’t fit down in there. Go ahead and look real close.
Nico: Bending over and practically sticking his headinto the water,; Wow, it is small, Mom. I won’t fall down there!
Me: Nope! Now, sit on the toilet, and move around. Just for fun. You won’t fall in!
Nico: Sit’s on the toilet, scoot’s around and around. Jumps off and runs through the house as if he hit the lottery!
Me: WTF?
Nico: I can do it now mommy!
Me: (to myself) I’ll believe it when I see it!
A few hours later…
Nico: (without me knowing), Mommy, mommy, come see, come see, I pooped on the potty!
Me: Dropping all 6 glasses that I unloading from the dishwasher because I cannot believe what I am hearing, and I am positive I mis-heard!
I run to the bathroom, open the door and birds fly out, angels are singing, the light is shining brighter than ever before and there it was… the most beautiful piece of poop I ever saw floating in the toilet! I actually started to cry. Does that sound mental?
Nico: Mommy, are you crying because you are happy?
Me: Trying to wipe his but and hug him and keep myself from totally lsoing it. Of course honey, I don’t think I have ever been MORE proud of you than I am right now!
Nico: Thanks mommy!
Me: Now, you know, you can do this every time you have to go poopy, right? He kind of had a blank look on his face, and I thought, great..here we go. it was a one time thing! But he continued to go, and never lookd back. So, see. I hope this gives you SOME incenitive to keep the positive side up. There are better days ahead Jill…I promise!
Ha! What a great story. I’ll have to keep this in mind 🙂
Does this mean that if I stick MY child’s head in the potty, she’ll use it, cause i’m about ready to duct tape her to it, if that’s what will work!
funniest. shit (pun intended). ever.
What Aliya said. Totally!
LOL!
Hey, at least he knew the correct final destination was the potty – that’s progress right??
Yes, thanks for reminding me to stay optimistic 😛
This is so awesome. For me, cause I get to read about it and not have to look at/clean the turdlets. For you, it’s less awesome I’d bet, but thanks for continuing to share it! I laughed so hard!!!
OMG! This made me laugh so incredibly much and scared the hell out of me all at the same time.
So awesomely funny.
For training – what about letting him run around nekkid, but keeping him contained to one room, with a potty chair? You’d have better luck catching him.
If it’s a carpeted room, you can just have it cleaned once all is said and done. Or you can buy those rolls of carpet protector that’s like heavy-duty saran wrap. Big home improvement stores have it. You can’t leave it down forever, but a few weeks would be fine.
Any chance of catching him doing his poop face? That’s really how we started with Ella. She gets quiet and still and just stands there. You really have to watch watch watch to catch them do it, so it is like a full-time job. Does he have a typical time that he goes, like half an hour after eating or something like that? Maybe start with that, keeping track of when he goes so your observation time is shortened.
Good luck! Love the stories, so at least your pain gives us entertainment. 🙂
Lisa, I’m sorry, but I can’t get past thinking about how hilariously awful it would be when that plastic covered room turns into a pee slip and slide 😀
I swear, K is a ninja pooper. I can never make out any sort of face he makes!
Um, yeah, now that you mention it…bad idea.
I love “poop ninja.”
OMG. Seriously hilarious… and I am SO not looking forward to trying to figure out how to potty train a little boy… he’s 18 months… it’s imminent…. ahhh!!!!
Okay I really hope I can say this without sounding all know-it-ally. Because I certainly do not know it all. I have, however, been through the potty training thing quite a few times. I need to write a post about how we are doing. But the short version is that it takes time, and dedication. And a whole lot of patience. For us the being naked thing worked the best. We let the kids run around naked for awhile and then we knew as soon as they were going so we could sit them on the potty. After a short time the started asking. Big Brother went pee on the potty for quite some time before he regularly got his poop in the potty. Big Sister does very well right now – unless we have company over. There seems to be something about having people in our house that makes it hard for her to ask to use the potty. Oddly enough she has no trouble asking when we are out. Since Kendell likes to run away from you as he is pooping all over the floor I would try keeping him locked in a room with me and have a potty sit in the room as well. This way as soon as he starts to go you can plop him down. I have seen that work with good results.
We have been at this for two weeks now and I consider it successful because she makes it through SOME days without a single accident and rarely has more than one. To me that is successful at this point. Other people will say it is not worth it and they just want to wait until their child is three or four. Either way is fine, it is all a matter of what you want.
I love that you are chiming in with tips! Obviously you know what you’re talking about. I will have to try the containing him to one room. It’s just going to suck a little for me. I’m totally going to have to be on my toes, but I guess that’s the only way this thing is going to get done.
Oh my. I’m eight months pregnant with my first child – a son. And this post kinda scares me, I must be honest. Oh, the joys of what I have to look forward to! 🙂
Question for those potty training…do you put them in a pull-up at night, or do you go whole hog and just take all the diapers, etc. away? My son’s 18 months and I’m just starting to read some books on potty training, I’m not clear on what to do at night. As much as I’d love him out of diapers, I’m not all the excited about waking up a bunch of times at night to do potty runs!
Kim, I hope Jill does not mind me answering but my daughter is 17 months and we are potty training and she is doing very well during the day but is still awhile away from being dry at night. With my son I waited until he was normally dry at night and then I put him in underwear overnight. They can control their bladders during the day long before they will recognize the signs and wake up. And personally I do not really want them to wake up. So, I waited. With my son it was about six months after he was using the potty all the time during teh day that he was dry at night. We switched him to pull ups and called them night time pants. So, he was no longer in “diapers” 🙂
Thanks! It always helps to know what works for others! Luckily, we haven’t yet had to deal with turdlets on the floor!
THIS is why Ethan still wears onesies… no access to the diaper!
This is HILARIOUS!!
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEW!!!!!!!!! I hate poop! Ave pooped in the bathtub last night (second time she’s done this) and I had to sterilize the tub and her toys and clean her off in the shower. It was a big brown disaster and sooooo gross.
Oh the fun of poop! We are working on the potty training too w/ our almost 19M old little dude. The diaper-less thing is working for us since he refuses to potty outside of his diaper…seriously, I’ve left him running nudey-booty for 3 hours and nothing. Have you tried one of those potty seats your put on the “big people” toilets? That is what REALLY got our son interested. He brings it to me, sits on it, pretends to pee or poo, gets some TP, then hops off. He won’t actually go in it yet, but I figure if he’s at least pretending to push something out, that’s a good sign. Good luck and hopefully you can find something that will work for Kendall (other than an attentive dog to follow him around to clean up…we’ve had that scenario & know all too well how eager dogs are to clean up other people’s business).
HAAAAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHA. Motherhood sounds SO GLAMOROUS.
We just went through this all with my daughter… luckily we had a 2nd baby before potty training, otherwise we’d have had second thoughts!
Sticker rewards worked for us, combined with natural consequences… When Grace peed in her undies and it ran down her leg and into her shoe (I know–ew)… I just looked at her and said… oh that’s too bad Grace. Mommy will change you in a minute when I’m done doing X. If you went pee in the potty you wouldn’t have to wear your wet pants right now. She really hated being messy like that, and being inconvenienced (I made her stand on the linoleum in the bathroom until I could attend to her a few minutes later)–she would beg for me to change her. Ahhh natural consequences. One day it just clicked.
She did not potty train until 33 months, although some of her girlfriends did it a year earlier. The boys always take longer. My second is a boy… oh rapturous joy of things to look forward to!
Good luck!!!
That story made me laugh out loud. Thanks for that! I also have a 21 month old and thankfully have not had to pick up poop from my living room (yet). She just likes to sit on the potty and hasn’t done anything in it yet, but I’m not pushing it. I don’t think she’s ready yet. Almost there though. Hope it gets better for you!
You should look into elimination communication/diaper free for the next child. A good book is Diaper Free Baby. We don’t go diaper free (our son still wears cloth diapers), but he pees and poops on the potty. We catch most of his poops and he while he still pees in his diaper, he also pees on the potty when we put him on it. We place him on the potty each morning when we get up, every time we change a diaper and when he shows signs that he is trying to poop. It is a life saver. SO, so, so many less poopy diapers. He has been using the potty since he was two weeks old, he is now 10.5 months old. We will see how this progresses as he gets older, but right now I think it is great. Something to look into for baby number two.
I’m definitely interested in learning more about the concept for the next one. I’m not sure I have the patience or commitment to commit fully to it, but I’m sure it wouldn’t hurt to know a little about it. That is so amazing that he has been using the potty since 2 weeks!
OMG that’s hysterical! And kind of frightening…I hope my little guy doesn’t do that (but who am I kidding, really? lol)
My son is 3 months old, and now I’m scared. And laughing. But probably more scared.
AHAHAHAAHAH oh I’m laughing out loud at the image!
He can poop and run at the same time? That’s some sort of talent. Not the best one for you perhaps, but still something you don’t see every day. HA.
Yeah, he’s very much like a rabbit… or a goat that way.
My husband was trained on M&M’s as a kid and my nephew on Skittles. It’s really funny to see my nephew run out of the bathroom naked from the waist down and yelling “Two spittles! Two spittles!” Whatever works right? My other nephew would hide in the closet and poop his pants because he didn’t want to do it in the toilet. Eventually my SIL got him Buzz Light Year undies and said if you poop in these and ruin them you won’t get any new ones. That worked like magic on him.
Good luck with the turds in the house. Ew! At leas tthe dogs are happy! (Double Ew!)