20071018

potty training and why there will be no pictures

Our little one has started showing an interest in going to the bathroom. Which is a great relief to us as diapers are not cheap and we were starting to worry about what our strategy was going to be if he decided it was not his thing. We had conversations wondering if we should home school him as a means to keep folk from realizing we had not managed to teach our child how to use the bathroom. (I never claimed we were always rational in our concerns about our child.) We have had various potty training implements scattered around the house almost since he could walk. The only interest he has shown in them is an occasional tendency to want to wear them on his head. Which makes sense to me but is a little disconcerting to my wife. A few weeks ago he made a break for it during a standing diaper change in the living room. He promptly scampered over to the nearest potty and sat down. It took a few more times before he got the idea that he could urinate into the potty. Now this is his preferred method. The ritual has become that every twenty minutes or so, as the spirit moves him, he will stop what he is doing to go and sit on the potty. Afterwards he will triumphantly get up and proceed to bring us the potty for our inspection and applause. The masterpiece in swirling yellow is disposed of, the potty rinced and returned to its place by the fire, ready to be used again. He has even been known to carry the full potty up a flight of stairs in order to present us with his latest offering. To support this budding habit he is left sans diaper for much of the time he is in the house. In fact he is sans anything but shoes from the waist down. The shirts he wears tend to be long and often his shirt is actually a onesy left unbuttoned. Think of it as a stealthy kind of nudity. Very "Risky Business: the early years". It is still startling to come home and pick your child up only to find he is without clothes on his bottom half. So far I have been lucky and he has been dry whenever I have picked him up. Eventually my luck will run out. As I am only home and able to spend time with this child during those times in the morning and evening when he is most likely to be without pants, I am sorry to say there may be a slowing down of posting his latest pictures. We don't mind it so much but tend to think the Internet is not a good place for pictures of children without pants.