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Sunday, April 1, 2012

How many more times do I have to do this?

There are a lot of aspects of parenting that get a lot of negative attention.  Getting your child to sleep through the night.  Teething.  The terrible twos.  Weaning.  Keeping those #@$@%! kids in bed.  Being borderline OCD, I was very apprehensive about having a child and was a pretty big stress case for the first few years of Kathleen's life.

Now that I'm on number four, however, I've seen a lot of early-childhood years and have come to the conclusion that most of the scary parts of early-childhood parenting aren't that bad and can be gotten through without that much trouble.

Except for toilet training.

Toilet training deserves all of its bad rap and then some.  I hate toilet training.

I have a friend who waits until their children beg her to train them before she even considers putting pull-ups on them.  I guess I don't hate it as much as her because in the end I dislike washing two boys' worth of cloth diapers less than I like toilet training.

After an unsuccessful attempt several months ago, this week I finally girded up my loins, filled up my mop bucket, readied my chocolate supply, and put Edwin in underwear.  After the first two days of puddles everywhere (thank heaven I just ordered a carpet cleaner), the excitement calmed down and Edwin spent at least twenty-five percent of his waking time on his little red potty reading books, playing with cars, eating sandwiches, and scooting around the floor.

And I have to confess, it wasn't so bad this time around.  But I still hate toilet training.

(You can thank me if you like for no gratuitous underwear- and potty-pictures)

4 comments:

UnkaDave said...

Thank you for the lack of photographic evidence. If cats can get the idea when they're, what, 10 days old, why can't big-brained humans? What's the mystery?!

PaulaJean said...

I always dreaded toilet training, too. I'm VERY glad those days are long gone. Good luck!!

nelsonjeneen said...

Agreed. I do not like toilet training. I still have three kids in diapers (twins are 3.5 years old, ugh). But this summer, my goal is to train one of the twins and April (who will be two next week).
I hate the poop. Maybe I should just let them go naked outside the entire summer? :)
Jill

Just US said...

I am with you! I absolutely abhor the process of potty-training. Good luck and hopefully Edwin catches on faster than my littlest one!