Who is this little girl who has replaced my baby? All of a sudden, my Baby Girl is talking in sentences, running around the house entertaining herself (mostly), answering questions (not just saying NO), refusing to put on clothes, changing her mind 14 times over one article of clothing, and all together acting like a little girl instead of a toddler. Potty training is imminent. I am dreading it.
I love diapers. I know I’m in the minority, but it’s just so EASY. You put a diaper on and you go about your day and you don’t have to find the nearest bathroom or patiently wait for someone to go poo whenever they manage it. Especially with my daughter. She doesn’t care when her diaper is wet. She’d go all day with it wet if I didn’t force the issue. She tells me anytime she’s “stinky.” We take care of the “stinky” and life goes on.
And the real issue is this… I have NO IDEA how to potty train something. Cats are easy. You stick the paws in the litter and scrape a few times and they’ve got that shit figured out. Literally. Horses don’t get potty trained. They go whenever, wherever. Their biggest problem is making them keep going forward if they poo in the middle of the flat class. And I don’t remember my own potty training – I bet I was born just using a toilet – so there you go. What on earth do you do?!
I have been avidly avoiding the issue for some time now. Grandpa sent money for a potty for his “fu fu.” There’s a Minnie Mouse one at Walmart that looks promising. I actually bought a book or two for Baby Girl on the subject. We read the “I wear panties” book every day. I point out that Mommy wears panties when she watches me go to the bathroom (I’ve already told everyone that I just leave the door open so we might as well move on to the fact that yes, she does indeed, watch me.) We discuss what toilet paper is for, we say “bye bye” to the toilet paper as it gets flushed. I keep the toilet lid down at all other times to make sure that other things don’t go “bye bye” too, like my phone that she’s fascinated with.
I have not read the toilet training section in the “Everything the Toddler Years” book. I know I need to. I did read an article somewhere that said back in the 50’s babies were generally potty trained by 18 months old because they didn’t have disposable diapers and the babies got annoyed enough with wet, dirty diapers that they eagerly embraced potty training. Well maybe not eagerly, but that’s the image I got in my head. Like they were also already talking in complete sentences and able to tell their parents exactly how they felt about the whole thing.
I have not bought tiny little panties for her yet. I am unsure what Pull-Ups are really for. My Baby Girl might be acting like a Big Girl in most ways but she can’t pull her own pants up over her diaper. So do you just go straight from diapers to panties and say good luck to ya Kid? I mean, does she even know when she has to pee? Do kids really figure out that if they have to pee they should pull down the Pull-Up (which is for all intents and purposes, really just a glorified diaper) and sit on the potty? She can take off her own diaper if she’s so inclined so what’s the point of Pull-Ups? I imagine that if she took off her own diaper to go pee in the potty that she would then just strut around naked until I did something about it. And if she has a diaper on, why would she take it off to go pee in the potty? She’s a smart kid – I think she would realize that peeing in the diaper is a whole lot easier. And what about at night?! I do not fancy waking up and having to change the sheets because of not getting to the potty fast enough. I don’t even have another set of Peppa Pig sheets for her bed. The more I think about it, the more I realize that this enterprise is getting even more daunting. And expensive.
I’m just so glad she’s a girl. I think teaching a boy would be a nightmare. On the other hand, if she was a boy I could just claim ignorance and pass the whole thing off to Daddy. But since that is clearly not an option I guess I should take the plunge (get it? Ha Ha) and dive right in…
Sit on it a few times a day first. Pour a little warm water on her while talking about pee. Wait until dry at night to worry about nights