The Potty Training Odyssey

Warning: this post is about potty training, which involves alarming subjects such as pee, poop, toilets and underpants. More immature people might not be able to handle this. Reader discretion is advised.  

I started this potty training process thinking I would post updates every day. You know, a sort of day by day adventure into the world of little boys and toilets. 

...but instead, I haven't blogged in like ten days.

And the reason why? Not because I was on vacation, deserted on a tropical island, thrown in prison or eaten by rabid wolverines. 

I have been completely and totally and utterly consumed by absolute potty training hell. 

I started full blown potty training the first day of Calen's school. On purpose of course, because Cam wouldn't have big brother to distract him, and I wouldn't have Calen to distract me. I was ready. Bring on the little underwears, the lack of diapers and wipes taking over my house, the overload of juice to get Cam to pee every five minutes to get the concept of going in the potty. Bring. it. on. 

Two years ago, Calen was SO easy to potty train. One day, he flopped himself on the floor and announced "I poop. I need changed." and I decided that was it, it was time to train him. It took a mere four days to train him. Four days. And since that fourth day, I can count on one hand the amount of accidents he's had (mostly while on long car rides, since he has a bad habit of not telling us he has to pee until the LAST SECOND POSSIBLE). For some ridiculous reason, I thought that Camden, sharing the same DNA as Calen and all, would be comparably easy to train. 

Oh, how wrong I was. 

The first day started off promising. Only a handful of accidents, and by the middle of the second day, he was telling me when he had to go "A-Poh-Eee!" I thought hell, this kid is just as easy as Calen. By the end of the week we'll be accident free. 

Or NOT. 

We are now on day 10. Day 10 of intense, exhausting potty training. Following him around wherever he goes and not letting him out of my sight for a single second. Forcing him to go sit on the toilet every twenty minutes or so. Not leaving the house for literally ten days (seriously). And the kid hasn't worn clothes (other than underpants) for a week and a half. 

This has been what my life has been the last ten days. Nothing but this.

The thing is, he knows how to hold it. And at this point, he holds it about 80% of the time and stays dry until he sits on the potty. And every once in a while, he will even go to the potty on his own volition, without me drilling his case about it. 

Here's the problem(s):

1. He's stubborn. And he likes to do things when he wants, how he wants it, period. And if you tell him to do something, he'll instantly put his feet down and refuse. This is just Cam. Which means that if I tell Cam to stop playing and go potty, he gets mad, and you have to drag his kicking body to the toilet. Which he'll usually go after, but by now he should be doing this on his own. This feeds into our number two problem:

2. He ALWAYS has accidents outside. Playing outside is his most favorite thing, ever. So if we're out in the back yard and I say "hey, let's go potty real quick", the idea of removing him from his favorite place to go do something as stupid (to him) as peeing on the potty is infuriating. And he definitely won't tell you he has to go when he's outside. So usually, he manages to escape my eyes for half a second, hiding under the slide or in the play house or behind the big tree and have a so-called "accident." And he knows it's bad, because he'll look down at his pants and go "Ewwww. Stinky. No no NO!" Finally, our third and hugest problem:

3. He will NOT poop in the toilet. Period, at all, ever. In ten days, he has managed to outsmart and trick us into pooping in his pull-up/underwear/floor. Every.single.day. A few times outside, but mostly, in the late evenings, when we think he's asleep in his room but he's actually doing his business in his nightly pull-up. Last night, Brad even kept him on the toilet late in the evening for half an hour to get him to do his thing. Which he didn't, and when Brad went downstairs for probably 90 seconds to get a sippy cup, he came back to poopy underpants. 

Eye-twitch. This is a nightly occurrence. 

The poop-issue aside, it does seem like we're making progress, slowly, SLOWLY, but surely. We now average maybe one accident a day (not counting nap and nighttime, which we aren't expecting anything at this point), which really isn't that bad for a less than 2.5 year old. And though it's taking three times longer than I ever expected (this is not how I planned on spending half of my September), I am happy to announce that we ARE diaper free for the entire day that Cam is awake. And that friends, is quite possibly the best milestone, ever. 

P.S. we actually ventured out of the house today. We took a pretty long drive to the mall (40 minutes) wearing a Pull-Up (Cam, not me) and he arrived dry, peed in a public restroom, and remained dry the entire time at the mall AND all the way home. Major, MAJOR milestone.

 

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