Adventures in Potty Training

It's hard to believe that October was the last time we bought a pack of diapers, but it's true. Now we have a panty-wearing potty-using two and a half year old and the money that was once spent on diapers and wipes has been reallocated to our wine & beer budget. 'Cause when you are "potty-training" a toddler, you need wine & beer.

Ever wondered why they call it potty TRAINING? Yeah, I wondered too. Until I did it. Now I get it. You actually have to explain to a tiny human why getting rid of their excrement in a toilet is preferable to just sitting  in it. Apparently Olivia was a breeze to potty train. We don't know since we haven't done this before but, sure, yeah if you say so. I mean, we definitely didn't think it was excruciating but we definitely didn't think it was easy either. I can't count the number of puddles I've wiped up off of our floors because Oli didn't make it to the toilet in time. Though she hasn't had an accident like that in quite a few weeks, we still have mornings where I am washing sheets because she just didn't make it through the night.

All in all it's pretty cool now. I really enjoy having a kid who can go to the bathroom by herself while we are at home...well, mostly. She still hasn't mastered the art of wiping after she poops. We didn't get out of *all* of it with this potty training business but it's a heck of a lot better than diapers. And now that we are a diaper free zone, I just thought I'd share some stories of our journey to get here:

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Olivia was interested in using the toilet long before she actually mastered using it. On occasion she would actually tell us that she needed to go to the bathroom and we'd hoist her onto the toilet only to find that she really just wanted to unravel the toilet paper. One day, as I was in the shower, Olivia started banging on the door shouting, "I go poo-poo in the potty!!!" "Okay, that's nice," I said. Fast forward 2.7 seconds to me realizing that I couldn't have heard that right because my child didn't know HOW to use the potty on her own and she sure didn't know how to wipe her behind after taking a crap. I flung open the shower door to find The Boss Lady standing there butt naked.

Let me back up for a second: I'm blind as a bat without my contacts and/or glasses on. You know that letter chart at the eye doctor's office? I can't even see the biggest letters. True story.

Anyway, so I see Olivia standing there but I can't really see much. So I ask, "Where is your diaper?" And she points toward the toilet. I quickly finish showering and jump out. In the meantime she's taken off somewhere else. I immediately put in my contacts and turn around to find that my bathroom looks like a massacre occurred. You know, if people bled crap instead of blood when they were cut to pieces. There was the stench of poop in the air mixing with the steam of the shower and creating a nice poop sauna. There was poop smeared all over the toilet and her clothes.

I gasped in disgust, choked back vomit and yelled for Olivia to come back into the bathroom. She came back and I saw there was poop on her too. After about 5-10 minutes of clean up, I realized something was still missing: the diaper! I asked Olivia where it was and she told me she had thrown it in the trash. But she couldn't say *which* trash. So I started looking in and digging through the trash cans in the house and luckily found it. If you have never had the misfortune of getting a whiff of a trash can that has a poop diaper in it, you are very lucky. It's disgusting.

Anyway, I got everything cleaned up and learned a very valuable lesson here that I think most moms learn early on: If you dare to do something by yourself, like shower, the shit will hit the fan.

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Right after Olivia was officially out of diapers, we went to have breakfast in a nice restaurant. This restaurant is really incredible, I mean the food is just deliciousness.  It's an old home so they've converted part of into a restaurant and the rest into a museum/gift shop. The bad news is that there is always quite a bit of a wait. Like an hour. And anyone who's ever had to wait an hour with a toddler ANYWHERE knows that anything can and will happen. We had been walking around the gift shop/museum there when Olivia told me she had to go to the bathroom. I started to lead her to the bathroom and she was walking a little behind me. I turned around to keep an eye on her as she followed me and found that she had stopped in the middle of the foyer, pulled her pants and panties down to her ankles, and had her shirt nearly pulled over her head. She then yelled, "I NEED TO GO PEE-PEE!!!" Being the good example of a parent that I am, I started laughing uncontrollably as I ushered her into the ladies room.

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Occasionally, Olivia will say, "I'm so proud of you." When you ask her why, she'll say, "For going poo poo in the potty." And you know, when she says that, I actually do feel *really* proud of myself for going poo poo in the potty. If I have done nothing else right for the day, I have at least done that.

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We initially tried getting Oli to wear those plastic panties at night so she wouldn't soak the sheets or comforter if she had an accident in the night. They go on over regular panties and they are awesome for parents but they are really awkward. They get hot and sweaty and they make weird crinkling noises so Oli was not a fan. After several nights of her not having had an accident, we decided to let her just sleep without them. We have a waterproof cover on her mattress so we figured we were safe.

One night, Olivia woke up in the middle of the night and ended up in our bed. I was just too tired to fight with her to get her back to her bed and I didn't want to get up and go sleep in her bed with her. So, I just tucked her in next to me and we fell back to sleep.

At some point in the night, I threw my arm over her and my hand splatted in a nice wet spot near the edge of the bed. "GREAT!" I thought in my sleepy stupor. I laid there, completely exhausted, realizing I was going to have to wake up Mike and Olivia in order to get clean sheets on the bed. Not to mention that I would be changing sheets in the middle of the night. Oh, and while we might have a waterproof cover on Oli's mattress, we do NOT have one on ours so I'd be cleaning that up too.

I did the next best thing to all of that chaos: I scooted closer to Mike and his side of the bed, sllid Olivia closer to me, figured my plan to clean all of it up would be just as effective during daylight hours and went back to sleep.

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Speaking of sleep, Captain Crazy Pants is refusing to settle down without me so I've got to go. Fingers crossed that I don't wake up in a puddle of urine tonight.