Sunday, January 6, 2008

Potty Training Mommy

LP is 19-months old. As much as I would love for her to be done with diapers, I am completely realistic that she is not really ready for potty training. That being said, I think she is starting to "express interest" in using the toilet.

A note: I think the whole "expressing interest" thing is really hooey. When people say they haven't stopped nursing yet, or moved their kid into their own room or starting the toilet training process because the kid hasn't yet "expressed interest" at three years-old, I think it is silly. You have to start sometime, folks.

Enough editorializing...back to the story...

Recently she has started saying "pee! pee!," pulling on her pants, and running to the bathroom. I haven't yet determined if this actually means that she has to go, but most of the time I humor her and at least pull her pants down and sit her on the toilet (leaving the diaper on just to make my life easier). Yesterday in Macy*s she found a door to an employee backroom and stood near it shouting "pee!" insisting that I bring her in to what she perceived was a bathroom. I can see how diapers are infinitely more convenient than frequent public bathroom trips.

The good news is that for the first time ever she started notifying us after she poops. Usually she just continues to go about playing, ignoring the fact that if she tried to sit down she would be elevated a few inches. Today she came over to me, pointed to her bottom and said "poop!"

This afternoon she also projected her new bathroom fascination onto her dolls. She brings them over to me, one at a time, saying "poop! poop!". Umm, I am pretty sure that the dancing Beyonce turtle doesn't have to poop. Rather than bring her Cabbage Patch Kid, Baby, into the bathroom to sit on the toilet every 5 minutes, we anointed a measuring cup from her cooking set as Baby's toilet. LP than tried to sit on the cup as well, perhaps not so sturdy for a 24-lb girl. We found a larger toy frying pan for her to pretend to pee on. She now carries it around everywhere and puts it down behind her before she sits down.

I don't want to discourage her from learning about the bathroom, so I do try to encourage this behavior. Tomorrow we go to Target to buy a little potty. I still think she is a while away from using it, but I am getting tired of running back and forth to the bathroom.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hah! My son is 16 months old and he recently started saying "poo poo" every time he, well, poos, OR is passing gas. While I think that it's great that he's aware of what's going on w/his body, I have NO expectation that he has any control over it! Hopefully, for the both of us, this early-awareness will make the potty training thing that much easier! Good luck!

Tiffany said...

It sounds like you are getting there. I bought the potty and I had Mikayla run around the house with no pants so she could just run to the potty and sit down when she felt like she needed to go.

I was lucky with Mikayla because for awhile she was happy to go either in her potty or in her diaper which made life easier when we left the house.