Malcolm is potty trained! This is one of those milestones in a child’s life that is worth noting. Some, sadly are not. The first erection, eating the first booger, and throwing the phone in the toilet for the first time are all firsts, but they don’t really change life much. Like learning to crawl or talking though, becoming potty trained is something that affects who Malcolm is, and how we live our lives. Now, we have to ask Malcolm whether he has to go to the bathroom before we go anywhere, driving to the grandparent’s house takes twice as long, and Malcolm can no longer take a dump in the middle of the grocery store. Well, he better not anyways. I am also relieved to say, that we are creating about half as much landfill as we used to.
This significant development feels like it happened over night, although in reality it was the final step in a journey that began almost a year and a half ago. We got Malcolm a small, plastic potty long ago, and told him all about how big kids go potty in the big kid’s toilet, and little kids go in their diapers. When we told Malcolm this, he looked somewhere between betrayed and dazzled, much in the same way a child would look if you handed them a shotgun and said, “This is what killed Bambi.” (What is it with Disney and gun violence, by the way?) We buttressed our efforts by reading Malcolm books about using the potty, until he finally realized that the future did indeed rest in evacuating himself into something other than his clothes.
Eventually, he started going pee in the little potty after brushing his teeth and before taking his bath. He really enjoyed peeing in the bathtub, though, and it was hard to break him of this habit. On many occasions, Malcolm stood up in the bathtub and let the golden showers rain down, proud that he had tricked his mommy and daddy into thinking that the small yellow pool in the potty was the full extent of the contents of his bladder. Mostly, though, Malcolm enjoyed going to the big boy potty and was proud of his accomplishment.
This only lasted until Malcolm decided to try and poop in the potty. Amy was there, and I wasn’t so I only heard about it second hand. The results were terrifying. After about 15 minutes of pushing, Malkie heard a loud plop, and immediately stood up to see what happened. He shrieked when he saw the poop in the bowl, and started pointing and crying about what had just come out of him. His reaction was similar to how I would react if, after pooping, I looked down and saw a large tarantula crawling around in the toilet, “That came from me?” Amy tried to explain that this was normal, and in fact the very same thing that happened when he pooped in his diaper, but Malcolm was convinced that the toilet itself had some mystical powers that altered his feces. For months afterwards, Malcolm refused to go near the potty, and didn’t even take much joy in peeing in the tub.
Slowly but surely, Malcolm returned to his nighttime ritual of going pee in the potty, although far less frequently, and never with his mommy, who must have played some role in the poop episode (poopisode”). During this time, I would occasionally ask Malcolm during the day if he wanted to go pee in the potty, and would ask at the beginning of the day if he wanted to wear big boy underwear. This time was a struggle, as Malcolm was nearing three years old and I saw most of his classmates wearing their underpants, signaling haw far Malcolm was falling behind his classmates. I wanted to engage the sink or swim method, and cut Malcolm off from diapers cold turkey during what was sure to be an exhausting, humiliating weekend of parenting struggle. Amy was flatly opposed to the idea, insisting that the long term damage to Malcolm’s psyche wasn’t worth it, and reminded me of how easier it was to put Malcolm in a diaper and remain blissfully ignorant of whether he had to, or had recently gone, to the bathroom in his diaper.
So there we were, at about 3 years and 2 months of age, considering diaper changes only when Malcolm stunk like a port-o-potty at a rock concert, or when his diaper was so full that it dragged down his pants, revealing a considerable amount of butt crack. One morning, though, I asked Malcolm whether he wanted to wear big boy underpants. I was so shocked when he actually said yes that I didn’t know what to do. After coming to my senses, I sounded the horn, set security levels to defcon 1, and ran around the house desparately trying to find some underwear. I eventually found them, slipped them on Malcolm, and we headed upstairs to show mommy the latest in Gerbers training underpants fashion. Mommy was very excited, Malcolm was very proud, and he hasn’t wanted to go near diapers ever since. I must have asked him 20 times a day if he had to go pee, and when he did, he excitedly ran to the toilet to pee. He stands up at the big toilet, arching way back putting his nee nee over the toilet like Kate Winslet in Titanic yelling “I’m on top of the world!”
The real test of his new found status was his first potty poop, for which I announced would immediately result in the delivery of one very yummy chocolate chip cookie. As hoped, Malcolm said that he had to go poop, sat down on the little potty, and pushed and pushed (with me near him in the bathroom imitating Bill Cosby shouting, “Push it out! Shove it out! Waaaaaay Out!”) He eventually did the deed, and when he stood it up and looked, it was pride that shone in his eyes, not fear and disbelief. As promised, he got a cookie. We continued down this path of trading cookies for poo, until a week or so later, when the event wasn’t such an exciting ordeal, and no cookie was necessary.
He still wears pull diapers to bed, but they are no longer called pull up diapers, they are just “pull ups.” He has only made one mistake, that being a fountain of urine that erupted in the middle of the kitchen, as Malcolm announced, “Daddy, I am peeing.” This accident did not scare him into a setback, and neither has the handful of times that he has wet through his pull-up at night or during his nap. So now, he is potty trained, and our lives are different because of it. It is certainly less convenient for us out in the world, but you just can’t beat seeing the joy in your kid’s eyes when they have tackled something scary, and come out ahead.
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your blog is so good……
All this talk about poop from you reminds me of a story you told about a grandmother who was living with you and pooped in her room and smeared it all over the walls and then said "Look at this… LOOK AT THIS"