Tuesday, April 10, 2007

By the numbers


Approximate number of times I've said the word "potty" today: 1,856,429
Approximate number of times Liza has actually peed in the potty today: 45 (I swear, I've met women who were 9 months pregnant with larger bladders than this kid)

A couple of weeks ago I took Liza over to the fancy shopping mall on the east side of Cleveland, partly to look at the Pottery Barn store, and partly to kill some time. She could have cared less about the mall ("does it have an Auntie Anne's pretzel store? Yes? Then it's all good."), but she was absolutely entranced by the kid-sized toilet in the family bathroom near the food court. Not only did she want to sit on it, she actually peed while she was there, which is the first time we've gotten her to use a public toilet anywhere. I swear, I think she'd STILL be there if I had let her stay.

Shortly after the mall trip, Liza developed the relatively unattractive habit of sticking her hand inside her diaper and fooling around whenever she got bored. My mother was convinced she had some sort of infection, my reference books all said it was normal and shouldn't be discouraged, and Jason looked like he wanted the earth to open up and swallow him whole, he was so embarassed. Eventually we figured out that part of the playing around was because she had a wet diaper, and she was finally signalling that she wasn't too thrilled about it. This was followed by five or six oh-so-memorable days when she came up to me every afternoon with her hand covered in stuff she had fished out of her diaper, saying "Poop? Poop!" Fun times.

Now she has developed the habit of indicating that she wants to go potty by dropping trou wherever she happens to be. Since most of the time she's relatively far from the potty, this results in her trying to do the 50-yard-pants-around-her-ankles-waddle across the hotel room (or the entire first floor of my in-laws' house). Two days of "No, sweetie, you walk to the potty first and THEN pull down your pants" hasn't made a dent in it. At least she's able to hold it long enough to get to the potty ... I'm really not set up to do a lot of hotel carpet cleaning over the next few weeks.

Newsflash: While I've been typing this, honest to god, the kid pooped on the potty for the first time ever. You heard it here first!

And, of course, she's all about helping clean up afterward, so she attempts to waddle across the room with her diaper around her ankles and both hands on a pot full of pee, dumping onto the toilet seat whatever doesn't slosh out onto the floor. I have to keep the flushable wipes where she can't reach them, at least I have to now that I've had to fish half a package out of the toilet. I'm hoping that we get past the worst of the splashing and spotting and sloshing before we move into our new, nicely carpeted house, but I'm not holding my breath. Anyone got any urine removal tips?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

oh, this brings back memories ... you must be doing something right, one my kids was at the ripe (!!!) age of four until it happened.
K's mom

Anonymous said...

I believe "Nature's Miracle" (at pet stores) works on people pee, as well as cats.
Mary Ellyn

Anonymous said...

My 4-year-old enjoys touring the restrooms at every place that we visit. She doesn't really need to go; she just enjoys the sight-seeing variation.

In this transition phase, we also used "pee pee candy" as well as the more desireable "poo poo candy." These were instrumental in motivating proper bathroom technique, such as dropping the trousers in the bathroom and washing hands.

To keep the hands out of the diaper, try a mousetrap.
- MLF

(just joking about the mousetrap)

(not that it wouldn't work)

Kimberly said...

We had lots of step-by-step instruction going on here before Morgan figured out the whole, walk to the potty, pull down pants, etc.

Good luck!