Under Where?

I'm not going to belabor the point, but suffice it to say I've never had a good attitude about potty training. I've blogged about it before, but I think I deleted it. It seemed to cause a flurry of excitement among my mommy friends and family that made me so stressed out, angry, and frustrated I wanted to break up with everyone I knew. We've walked down this road before, and not without the bitter sting of a complete lack of support and the even more bitter sting of the smell of poop. Our potty training began with Ben talking nonstop about going potty and trying to climb into the toilet so that he could and ended with me cleaning poop off the bathroom floor. He was displaying "all the signs of readiness" as outlined in numerous books, and despite the fact I was fairly certain he was too young and not at all ready, I went for it because, hey, I could be wrong. I was not. So we put away the seat and the underwear and that was that. Every now and then he asks to use the potty. We pull it out, let him sit on it, and he never goes. He sits there for two seconds, points out Elmo on the potty, then says "all done!" I don't push it. I'm in no hurry. I mean, it would be nice to be able to stop buying diapers. But I also am not super eager to begin the accident phase, and the phase where we have to drop everything and sprint to the bathroom at the mall or Disneyland or whatever. And I've heard horror stories of people who have had to endure potty training for upwards of a year. Shoot me. I want to do it when Ben is unequivocally ready so it takes one hour. I'm kidding. Kind of.

So imagine my excitement when Ben wakes up Saturday morning saying "underwear, Mommy! I want to wear underwear!" Since it was a rainy weekend and we didn't have much going on, I set my reservations aside and said, "sure." I had a feeling that he just wanted to wear underwear because his friend does, not because he's biologically ready. But he refused to wear a diaper, so I kind of didn't have a ton of choice. There's a certain technique where you just put them in underwear and encourage them and it's over and done in three days. It's obviously more involved than that, but that's the gist. It's not really the route I was planning on going, but it seemed to be the route Ben was leading me down. I have a friend who did it and her poor little girl didn't poop for a week because she was so afraid of having an accident. But again, Ben reeeeeally wanted those underwear. He poops like clockwork, so I figured I'd have some cleaning to do, but it would be manageable. Right? Wrong.

All day I followed him saying, "do you have to go potty? tell mommy when you have to go potty." Obviously he didn't. He sat on the potty a million times, but never went. I expected that. But I was still annoyed. I even pulled out the little potty so that he had two choices when he decided to go. It took a couple of hours for the first accident to happen. When it did, I cheerfully responded to his concerned look and boldfaced lie ("Ben, did you go pee?" "No, mommy.") with an "It's okay, buddy. Everybody goes pee. Just tell Mommy next time when you need to go so I can take you to the potty."

The first poop happened shortly thereafter. It mostly stayed in the underwear, except for the bit where he stuck his hand down there. I cleaned him up, put on a fresh pair, and sent him off to play. "Mommy, everyone poops in underwear." Sure, buddy. Sure.


We had some character underwear and some of the training kind with extra padding. The training ones were nice because not much ended up on the carpet. Which was handy because he peed three times and pooped once that day. He finally let me put a pull-up on him for his nap. When he woke up it was dry, so I left him in it while we ate dinner and played for a bit before church. Around 5:20, just 10 minutes before we were supposed to leave (Matt was already gone so it was just the two of us), he peed in his pull-up. I took it off and he wouldn't let me put another one OR underwear on. I figured, hey, he just peed, he doesn't poop until 6:30. I'll just let him run around naked for 10 minutes while I get ready.

Wrong.

10 minutes later I pick him up to put clothes on him. I set him down, and we were both covered in poop. I asked Ben, "Where did you go poop?" He pointed to a spot on the ground that had a speck of poop. I knew that wasn't it. I asked him again. He insisted. I searched the house. Searched. No poop. By now we should definitely be on our way to church. But I'm not leaving a mystery pile of poop behind. I noticed our bedroom closet door open a bit. On a whim I grabbed a flashlight and looked. There it was. A big. pile. of. poop. in. my. closet. He pooped in the closet, y'all.  I sighed and said, "there it is." Ben clapped his hands and said "Yay! My turn flashlight find poop!" Um, no. This game is over.

I cleaned it up (and had flashbacks of cleaning up after my cat), cleaned B up, cleaned myself up, forced him into a pull-up, put clothes on us both, and headed to church.

Day 2.

I was pretty sure we were done with the underwear. At least I was. But Sunday Ben woke up once again asking for underwear. Sigh. Fine. This time I doubled up on the underwear, which made clean-up really easy.

Here's the thing--he didn't care that he was swimming in his own filth. He simply said, "Clean up, Mommy!" He had no awareness of the fact he needed to go. He stopped asking to use the potty. In fact, he refused to go near it except to put his toys on time out it in ("two minutes, Woody!"). So we're done. I quit. After I cleaned up my third poop of the weekend on Sunday afternoon, I told Benjamin that he had to wear a pull-up, that he could tell me if he needed to use the potty, and that he could have his underwear back when he started going pee and poop in the potty.

Side note: we went to the pumpkin patch with our friends that evening, where Ben, on at least three occasions that I know of, put his hand down his pants and said, "Just checking!" At least he didn't publicly try the other trick he invented over the weekend: pulling his Ben Jr. out of his underwear and saying "Ta da!"