He pooped in the potty! He pooped in the potty! Stop the presses: he pooped in the potty!
Think this is a weird thing to get excited about? Then you have obviously never raised a toddler. This is a situation of location, location, location. A fresh steaming pile of excremement smeared around in a diaper? Quotidian. A fresh, steaming pile of excremement in a gleaming, never-used Baby Bjorn potty? Victory!
Don’t get me wrong, we’re not hardcore potty trainers over here. It’s not like we marked a date on a calendar and said, “Miles must be potty trained by this date!” (Nor do I think one poop in the potty means we’re bidding diapers adieu.) We’re also not doing the “boot camp” style of potty training in which you teach a kid in three days by abruptly going diaper-free. We’re kind of taking the approach that he’ll learn to use the potty the way he learned to use a spoon — gradually, through imitation, and with often messy results. So we show him how to sit on the potty seat and give him lots of practice sitting on it while we read him books. And that is about the extent of our potty training.
He has peed in the potty exactly twice. The first time, when the urine started to flow, he looked frightened, jumped up, and tried to hold the pee in with his hand. The second time he sat down, grunted, peed, and acted like it was no big deal. But the first time was over a month ago, and we haven’t been very focused on the potty lately with all of our travel.
So we weren’t expecting much this morning when Miles wandered over to his potty, sat on it still wearing his diaper, and said conversationally, “Miles potty!”
I took his diaper off just in case, and Robin sat down to read him a book. After awhile, Miles became completely engrossed in the book — a favorite of his, Richard Scarry’s “Cars and Trucks and Things That Go” — and seemed to forget his purpose.
“Okay Miles, go ahead and poop,” Robin said.
So he grunted and pooped.
And we both lost our minds with delight.
We’d been intending to be low-key about any potty victories in order not to put pressure on him, but we couldn’t help ourselves. Robin cheered, and I took photos of the poop and high-fived him. I was just so proud — and certainly not of us. We didn’t do anything. But Miles did something amazing. He wanted to poop on the potty, and he did it. Without anyone forcing or bribing or stickering or cajoling* — with his parents basically being lazy about it, in fact — he decided he was ready and stepped up to the potty.
I mean, come on, what’s not to get excited about?
*I am not promising we will never bribe or sticker or cajole, for the record.
SQUEEEEEEEE! (You can tell I’m the mom of a toddler, too, huh?)
Ha ha! You were ON that! Thanks for cheering us on. Sniff. I knew you would uderstand me.