When I started this blog, I promised myself that I would never write about anything that could be embarrassing or humiliating in the public eye (I mean seriously, it is not okay to have toilet information about our future president of the United States, right?) However, your Nana informed me that I would not remember this stage of your life, only that you do, in fact, use the toilet appropriately and did not wear diapers long after it was okay.

I didn’t believe her, but after only a few weeks into you using the toilet on a consistent basis, I find that I am starting to forget the order of events. (Please let the record reflect that I am stating that I was wrong, and your Nana was right). Therefore, you can thank her for this very public record of your potty training escapades. 🙂

Let’s be clear. You knew what was going on with the potty LONG before you were willing to try it out. In fact, right around when you were two you started to show quite a bit of interest in using the potty. So we bought you your very own potty. (Note – this is a disgusting thing, and I don’t know why we bought it or thought it was a good idea. Who wants to clean out a plastic potty that doesn’t flush when you have a perfectly good potty hooked up to a modern plumbing system? Luckily for us, you had absolutely no interest in it.) Turns out – you had absolutely no interest in your own potty, and it sat collecting dust for over a year in our bathroom. At this point I was very patient with you because all the people who know what they are talking about all say that you shouldn’t push kids to use the toilet, only give them the opportunity.

So we dabbled in talking about the potty for a good half year. But by the time I was 5 months pregnant with your sister, I decided that I did not want to have two kids in diapers. And we started to push. But then I was on semi-bed rest, and finishing school, and completely exhausted, and you still had no interest in using the potty or wearing pull-ups and we let it go. Alas, I would have two kids in diapers. Ugh.

So then L came around and you can just count out the first three months of her life for doing anything productive besides keeping the family alive, so potty training was DEFINITELY not happening at that time. And then low and behold we were a whole year into contemplating potty training you.

This is where my patience begins to wear thin, mostly because your bladder was so big that the biggest diaper could no longer contain your bathroom habits and you were having accidents regularly. I remember one week particularly where you, the baby, and the dog all had accidents on beds as well as bloody noses. That week your father and I were questioning our life choices.

At this point even your daycare provider was starting to become exasperated with you. We all would try to see if you wanted to go on the big potty, and all you said was “Not quite yet.” Seriously? You use elevated word choice but won’t use the toilet. It got to the point that in daycare, while your diaper was being changed – yet again – , you were admonishing your peers for not using the toilet. Even for a toddler that is ridiculous.

At some point in here I lost it and just forced you to sit on the toilet. You were screaming. I was yelling. Your dad accused me of setting you back months in the potty training process. It was here that we decided that in the future I should not be the parent that tries to convince you to do anything. From here on out, that solely rests on your father to prevent any other setbacks in important milestones in your life.

And so we came to Thanksgiving break. I had just started working after my maternity leave and was determined that you would use the bathroom. (Read – I had JUST started back to work after maternity leave and my patience was at an all time low and sleep depravation was a real thing.)

Day One: Epic battle of wills. After copious amounts of discussion, we finally convince you that you should at least sit on the toilet (I think at this point we had to bribe you with multiple food choices since nothing would work at this time). You sat on the toilet for no less that forty-five minutes. Forty-five minutes. Forty-five minutes! Of course your father and I couldn’t complain about this because it took us one year and one month to get to this point. We tagged in and out of the bathroom every so often to give the other person a break. BUT, it had seemed that your fear of the toilet was over.

Day Two: We go to use the toilet and you lose it. You don’t want to do it. I can’t believe that we are here again since we just spent a significant amount of time on the toilet yesterday. So I decide we are just going to throw on underwear. Screw the pull up. Your dad put me on a budget and I was tired of paying for things that just ended up in the landfill and prolonged our misery. If we were going to do this, we were going to do this gosh darnit. So instead of taking lots of time convincing you to put on the pull up, I just put on underwear. Accidents be damned.

Rightly so, you were very upset about the concept of an accident. I spent an inordinate amount of time convincing you that it’s okay if you have an accident as long as you tried to use the potty. All seemed well with the world. I knew there would be accidents, but I figured “throwing you in the deep end”, if you will, would speed up the process. This was finally going to happen.

Turns out I did too good of a job convincing you that having accidents was okay and you peed all over the house. And didn’t care. A lot. I thought after one time you would get it. After the second time, well – it was a learning process. After the third, fourth, fifth, etc time and you just shrugged your shoulders and said “It’s okay, accidents happen,” I started to think I was in a loosing battle and you were going to spend an inordinate amount of time in diapers. So we gave up.

Then you went back to daycare and you refused to go the bathroom at all. In the toilet. In your diaper. No where would you go the bathroom. Now we’re worried about you getting bladder infections. So I commence to have another long discussion with you about going the bathroom. Great.

One day on our way home you see a bus and get excited about going to school. I light popped on in my brain, and I said “E, diapers aren’t allowed at school.”

“They aren’t?”

“Nope. They aren’t.”

“Okay, mom. I’ll use to potty when we get home.”

What??!?! Is this really happening? Did I finally find the bribe that would work for this kid? We go home, you use the potty like a pro and ask for underwear. We’ve done it. Seriously. We’ve done it! Seriously? Yay!!!!!!!

And then you go downstairs and start insisting that you pack your lunch for school because you are going, right now.

We spent the rest of the night talking you off the edge and trying to convince you that school isn’t going to happen for awhile. (Try for another nine months at least. What have I done?)

We’re still trying to convince you that school isn’t happening for awhile, BUT you are finally wearing underwear and using the toilet on a consistent basis (thanks to peer pressure at daycare – who knew that would turn out to be a positive thing) and will even use it out in public.

I’m not sure I can actually put this as a parenting win after almost a year and a half, but shoot. More than half of the people in our house are correctly using the toilet and not peeing in their beds. I think that’s a win in anybody’s book.