Potty-Training 101

Disclaimer: If you are bothered by the word "poop", hearing about poop or giving poop a name, please, do not read on.

I'm not sure what sparked it, but I decided to go ahead and try to potty-train Tate. I thought, well, it's summer. He can run around naked and not freeze. Let's go ahead and potty-train. Here's a run-down of the week.

Day 1: Spectacular. No accidents. Easy peasy. I thought "Wow, that was easy. I didn't even do anything." (Note to self: When a very regular 2-year-old doesn't poop all day, something's not quite right).

Day 2: Irrational fear of pooping on the actual toilet begins. Poops on kitchen floor.

Day 3: Saves up poop for naptime when he's still in a diaper. Better than the floor. Less clean-up for Mom!

Day 4: No poop. Yeah! Another accident-free day!

Day 5: Poops in underwear. Three times. Holding it in yesterday made for a rough day today. Yikes.

Day 6: Lance is home! A little rest for the weary here. We rationalize, we bribe, we beg. Tate will not poop on the potty. After pooping in his underwear, Lance sets him on the potty and a tiny little pea-sized poop drops in the toilet. I'm certain this was just sitting there, ready to fall, and not a result of any sort of effort on Tate's part. Regardless, the celebrating begins. Tate gets a gumball, the bribe we had been dangling in front of him. He's pretty darn proud of himself.

Day 7: Tate poops on the toilet. 8 times. Seriously, 8. He has taken to naming his poop. "Oh, look, it's a little wormy. This one is a snail. Look at the turtle in there!" Of course, he gets 8 gumballs for the day. Each poop is approximately the size of said gumballs.

Day 8: More frequent pooping. More gumballs. Seriously this kid is going to be the only 2-year-old with hemorrhoids.

Day 9: A bit of Day 8, plus a naptime surprise. We'll see what happens the rest of the day.

Synopsis: Well, he is doing better than I expected. It was like he was immediately potty-trained in one area. Just not sure what to do to discourage the amount of pooping going on over here. I think we'll be running out of gumballs very soon...