Potty
Training will be the end of me. I’m not even joking. I know I thought weaning
Levi off the binky was the Worst Thing Ever, but it has been surpassed, and let
me tell you, I’m not over exaggerating or just being overly dramatic (like with
that whole binky debacle a year ago… let me tell you, I’m so much more mature
and level headed now. I’ve really changed in a year). At the very least, I’m
thankful that I can trust my instincts and know when I’m faced with something
utterly impossible, which gives me the opportunity to try to come to terms with
the sheer undeniability (that’s a word!
Don’t look it up, take my word for it, dang it) of the fact that what I want is
just hopelessly unattainable. (Let’s pause for a moment while I pat myself on
the back for being able to find a silver lining in even the darkest cloud.)
I KNOW it
seems like I’m just being overemotional and making a mountain out of a mole
hill (my husband claims I do this often. He’s crazy.), but you don’t know the
obstacles I’m faced with. They’re HUGE.
First? I am
SO lazy. I probably don’t even need to expound on that. I shouldn’t even
write that, but there it is. While I know many moms look forward to the day
their toddlers are no longer in diapers, I have never fully understood their
reasoning. I can see, on one hand, how diapers are expensive, and MAN does it
get old wiping crap off their butts (especially when they don’t tell you they’re
poopy and there’s no obvious smell, so by the time you realize they need to be
changed, it takes about a half an hour to scrape the dried particles off their bottom
while they yell at you for taking a long time. The audacity!). However, I see
so many more bonuses to keeping him in a diaper. I don’t have to worry about
accidents, stopping frequently on a long trip, or dealing with the horror of a public
bathroom (Wal-mart comes to mind…). I don’t have to worry about a wet bed or trying
to wake up at crazy hours of the night to take him to the potty to avoid an
accident. Diapers are SO STINKING EASY!
Secondly
(is that the proper word? Should I have used just ‘second?’ Why does that sound
so wrong? Whatever. Oh my gosh.), my patience for things like these
aforementioned accidents is nonexistent. I don’t know what it is (perhaps my
crazy OCD when it comes to certain kinds of messes), but the thought of Levi
getting pee all over his clothes drives me CRAZY! I mean, it won’t just be his
clothes, it will also be the floor, or the couch, or his car seat (which is SO
HARD to take apart to clean). I know people will say kids don’t do it on
purpose (as they have already stated to me), but they are wrong! They haven’t
met my kid!
That’s
right, we have already tried potty training at least SEVEN TIMES now. I don’t
just mean seven days, either. Most of those attempts lasted anywhere from 4-7
days. The first few times, I just realized I was pushing Levi too early, as he
clearly wasn’t ready to be potty trained. However, he’s almost 3 ½ now, and he
can tell me when he’s already gone potty. His vocabulary is good enough to tell
me when he has to go. He can hold it if I ask him to (for church nursery, it
was the only way he could get moved to the next class without being potty
trained), and if I leave him to run around naked, he won’t have any accidents.
The issue arises when I put his underwear on. We tried pull ups and quickly realized
they were just glorified diapers. Then we moved up to the ridiculously
expensive spider man underwear (we let Levi pick them out as incentive to wear
them). I used an approach I found online (I have tried so many different things
now), and it worked…for the first day. Levi even pulled down the underwear BY
HIMSELF and went on his potty. It was amazing!
Then the
second day hit. Levi realized the same thing I’ve always known-going potty on a
regular potty is much harder than a diaper. So he decided he wasn’t going to do
it anymore. I would sit him on his potty and he would adamantly insist he didn’t
have to go—then the second I’d pull his underwear back up, he’d pee. He didn’t
care that he wasn’t getting anymore treats, he didn’t care that he was messing
up his nice spiderman undies. He didn’t even care that they were wet! I keep
reading that if you let them have a few accidents in their underwear, they won’t
like the feeling of it and will stop doing it. NOT MY KID! I left him in it
after one accident, praying to God for patience because I KNEW he was going to
get pee all over (AHHH), and he did NOT STINKING CARE. What am I supposed to do
with this??
Now… now,
oh my gosh. You would die if you listened to Levi while changing his diaper
now. This child is a con artist, I kid you not. If I can tell he needs a diaper change (he has
stopped telling me, I’m assuming because he doesn’t want to go back to the
potty training), I tell him to come lie down, and immediately, he starts going:
“Lookit that, mommy! I did it! I peed in my diaper! I’m such a big boy!” or “Woah!
No way! Guess what, mommy? See how I peed in my diaper?”
Really,
kid? Seriously?
I’ve been handling
it okay, at least. I don’t blow up at him, I don’t yell at him, and I don’t try
to make him feel bad. I don’t want him to see potty training as a scary thing.
I just don’t know what to do!
Yes, yes,
okay, I DO know that every adult in the world is potty trained (there are
exceptions of course), so it will eventually happen… but I don’t want to have
to wait until my stubborn child is 5 before he makes that decision. John keeps
reminding me the “The Pembertons are all stubborn… my own brother and sister
weren’t potty trained until after they were five!” (Can I just say that that
makes me want to lock myself in a bathroom with Levi until he is force potty
trained?) I know my issue seems ironic, considering how I enjoy the laziness a
diaper affords me… however, I’m sick of constant poopy diapers. I can’t enroll
him in a daycare until he’s potty trained. And if he has an accident at church,
then he gets moved back down to the 2 yr olds, which feels like a slap in the
face, because apparently no one else has issues potty training their 3 year
old. Also, it’s got to happen sooner or later, and I’d prefer it to be before I
have a job, so I can actually devote the necessary amount of time needed to
make this happen.
AHHHHH!
Now that I’ve
written this and certain people can think to themselves that I’m, once again,
being hugely overdramatic (as if that’s EVER true, pssh), Levi will probably
potty train himself this next week just to prove me wrong.
That would
be so awesome.
Well, it is
what it is. Apparently, he’s just not ready yet. Or maybe I waited too long. I
don’t know. I wish the same process used to train one kid worked on them all!
In the meantime, I will try again (eventually, it’s not happening THIS week at
least), and I just ask that if you’ve read this far, that you’d say a quick
prayer that my child will suddenly hate diapers and want to go on a potty. I’m
not joking!
At the very
least, at least he’s given me something to blog about once again. I can only
wonder (and shudder) at the thought of what the next big thing will be that
will make this look silly… (dun duh daaAAAaaa…)
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