Potty Talk

Okay, so, Giz's "lazy parent" comment on her blog got me thinking about Jack and the toilet. Since he's the third kid an' all I could be potty training him now rather than waiting until three or so as I did with Isaac. I've been throwing the idea out to him for a while and today, after a week of pep talks (fair warnings), we began potty training. I won't bore you all with the details, but we had potty successes and potty failures...um, several. We were due to make the all important trip to the toy store for the highest reward of toddlerhood - the "poopy prize" - this evening, but Brian worked some unplanned overtime so the toy store trip will be tomorrow.

It's so funny how I forget the actual potty training process - what do I do again? You'd think by the third kid it would be second nature or something. Today, I said good morning and put his butt in underwear, reminding him of all our pep talks throughout the week. "See, no more diapers! You are a big boy in underwear!" - spoken in fake, super happy mom voice. Jack stood up, looked over his shoulder at his bottom then shot a famous Jack scowl my way as he crossed his arms, "Put me in a diaper! I don't want to wear these underwear."...and so our wonderful potty training experience began. Yippee.
By the end of the afternoon Jack was more on board with the process. Stickers (and lots of them) helped, as did M&M's and putting Cheerios in the toilet. Of course, now he thinks there MUST be Cheerios in the toilet to use it, but that's a minor detail we can work out later. (Why not keep a box of Cheerios in the bathroom, really? I have Cheerios everywhere else in my house...on the floors, under furniture, stuffed in partially opened doll mouths...What's one more room?) Stickers also helped with Isaac and Soph. Adhesive Supermans (Supermen?) and Doras rewarded them for distracting Noah while I supervised Jack's reluctant deposits in the potty. In fact, the kids even offered to clean up their toys for MORE stickers. I went through roughly 800 stickers in an hour and have a sparkling house from top to bottom - who knew they could alphabetize and arrange by size, shape and color?
Day One of potty training ended with sticker-covered children, a pile of foul smelling bedding and clothing size 2T and one mad little Noah who was sick of being distracted by his older siblings. The plan, as if I really have one, is to potty train Jack and wrap up the weaning process with Noah (he bites) ASAP. Then, with only one baby in diapers, I hope to switch back to primarily cloth diapers. The diaper money saved will be wasted on extras and suburban junk we don't really need and/or go into our heavily guarded emergency fund.