I just re-read my first potty-training blog from the weekend
two years ago when we basically injected Finny with a gallon of Capri Sun and
then watched him explode all over the house (http://vanhimbergen.blogspot.com/2011/06/potty-training-you-crazy-mystery.html).
My panic and anxiety about potty-training is palpable. It pops off the page and sinks into my
nerves. I remember this feeling of dread
and impatience and complete puzzlement.
If I over-filled Finny with Capri Sun, I over-filled myself with ideas
and methods and techniques and everyone else’s opinion of what was right and
what was wrong. I nearly exploded
myself.
This time was different.
This time the voice and wisdom of my friend Anne echoed in my head: “It’s just pee and poop." I was floored when we went to the zoo with
Anne and her boys, Zach and Nick, who was two and a half at the time, and she
said, “Nick is wearing underwear today.”
“What?!” I looked at her as if she’d completely lost her
mind. “You are taking him to the zoo
with just underwear on? How did you do
that? Why did you do that?”
I remember interrogating her in my kitchen, her nonchalance
blowing my mind. “It’s just pee and
poop,” she said.
And I thought, just pee and poop?! Just pee and poop?! Pee and poop all over the floor, all over the
underwear, all over the car seat!
Something more I have to make time for, something else I have to clean
up, something else I have to find patience and energy for, something that is
going to slow us down, keep us inside, make me crazy! My perfectionism, my fear of failure, my
self-doubt were voices so loud in my head that I couldn't make room for all the
messiness and uncertainty that comes with potty-training.
But last Saturday when we decided to throw Charlie in a pair
of underwear for the day, I had better voices in my head. I had my mom and my sister, saying, “Try
it. If it doesn't work, so what? Put him back in diapers.” And out of all the potty-training books and
manuals I had read, the one phrase that remained was from Anne, “It’s just pee
and poop.”
If we look at last Saturday as a whole, all signs point to
one conclusion: not a good time to potty
train Charlie. I was up at 3 a.m. with a
mean hangover after spending a night drinking vodka drinks with David as if I
were twenty-two and had nothing more to do on a Saturday than eat an egg
sandwich and watch a Kurt Russell movie marathon. I had to clean my house and bake a cake for
Finny’s family birthday party with Aunt Celeste and Uncle Ray, and I had to run
ten miles to prepare for our upcoming race.
But it was rainy and we were staying in, and Aunt Celeste and Uncle Ray
have five kids, so I knew they wouldn't care if the cake turned out ugly and we
were spending a little extra time in the bathroom. I was also probably still the tiniest bit
drunk from the night before. So we went
for it.
I did not make a sticker chart, we did not throw a potty
party, and I didn't give Charlie anything extra or additional to drink that day
than I normally would have. I also
didn't stalk him around the house watching his every move and insisting he sit
on the potty every thirty minutes. We
just put him in underwear and showed him where to go.
He pooped his underpants four times that first day. Four times?!
And do you know what I did? I
rinsed them out and threw them in the wash.
But he also peed on the potty, all but once, all day long,
and every time we celebrated with “neminems!” and high fives. And every time, I’d say, “I’m so proud of
you, Charlie!” and he’d respond, “I’m so proud of you too, Mommy!” And he has no idea how much that meant to me. He has no idea what kind of progress I've
made.
The next day, we went to the zoo. The zoo!
And his pull-up stayed dry the whole day. If he had to pee, he told me and we
went. And that night, we went to dinner
at a restaurant. In underwear. And I did not even think to bring a diaper
bag or a change of clothes. We visited
the bathroom three times. Two false
alarms, one success. And he stayed dry
the whole time. The whole day. No accidents on the second day of
potty-training. And now, as I sit here
typing six days after his first official day of wearing underwear, he is at
preschool, in underwear, all by himself.
…And now as I finish this blog, ten days later—because
nothing I start ever seems to get finished these days—Charlie is officially
potty-trained. He wears underwear all
day long, pees and poops on the potty, sometimes for M&M’s, sometimes just
because he has to go, he wakes up dry in the morning, and I have officially--for
the first time in five years--put the Diaper Champ away.
This is not to say he does not have the occasional accident,
this is not to say we still don’t have to stand there and help him through the
process of getting the seat out, getting his pants down, washing his hands,
etc. But the difference is all in my
understanding of the process. There is
no “Potty Training in Less than a Day!” despite what the book title claims. There is no “Potty Training Boot Camp” and
then you’re done. Potty Training, like
parenting, is a process that evolves over years and it is different for every
kid. It’s messy and uncertain and to the
new parent—terrifying.
But when there are successes, when everything miraculously
lands where it’s supposed to, when it’s supposed to, the pride is palpable, the
high fives are hand-stinging, and the M&M’s taste like something rich,
something decadent, something you should stand on a potty-stool-podium to
receive with cameras flashing.
Because after all, it’s not “just” pee and poop. It’s pee and poop in the potty. And that’s remarkable. Not worth getting all worked up over, but
definitely worth struttin’ around the house with your head held high and your
best pair of Diego undies smiling behind you.
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