Potty Party September 10, 2007

This morning we walked to the playground and hadn’t been there for more than five minutes when Atticus said, “Poopy.” I checked his diaper — nothing. He then turned around and started to play, but I could tell from his odd posture as he gripped the metal bars that something was being extruded from his behind. Of course, I’d left the house with only a sippy cup, but no diapers.

“You pooped. We need to go home and clean it.”

“Come back?”

“Yes, we’ll come back after Mommy cleans your diaper.”

Here it was, a week since my failed attempt to flush his poop, and I had another lovely firm deposit to toss in the toilet. My now-expert eye gauged it a 9.2 on the scale of flushability, and I was right. It went down without a problem.

We were about to head back to the park when he said, “Poopy again.”

“You have to poop again?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Do you want to sit on the potty?”

“Okaaaaaay.”

I put the potty seat in position on the toilet. As I took off his diaper I noticed a small stain. Poop was imminent. He kicked his legs and whined when I picked him up. “It’s okay, ” I reassured him as I parked myself awkwardly on his step stool. “We can just hang out here in the bathroom and play until your poop comes out.” His face brightened. What a concept! We can just hang out! “Why don’t we say our ABCs until your poop comes out?”

We got as far as “I”, and then he tilted his head down into silence. He had his baseball cap on, so I couldn’t see his expression, but there was determination in his bowed little head. I heard a tiny plop, then another. Then moving his head like a turtle’s, he looked at me, as in, “Now what?”

“All done pooping?”

“All done,” he said, smiling shyly.

Of course we made a Really… Big… Deal out of it… Mike got the honor of flushing since Atticus was too afraid to do it. (Maybe, as Brazelton suggests, kids wonder or worry where it goes.) In short, I’m certain his birthday celebration paled in comparison to the whoops and cartwheels we made throughout the house.

Just what the doctor ordered September 2, 2007

Mike took Atticus in for his two-year check up last week, and the doctor inquired about whether we had initiated any potty training. Basically Atticus will sit on the potty seat and play around, and when I say, “No, point it down,” he’ll laugh at me and say, “Point it up! Point it up!” Like every kid his age, he loves to flush the toilet repeatedly. He does tell us when he’s pooped, and sometimes like a bus driver he’ll give us a heads up that the next stop will be at Poopy Central. But we are far from training him.

Anyway, the doctor suggested that the next time he had a “solid” poop, we should show it to him, throw it in the toilet and flush it down so he could get used to the idea of where the poop should go in the future.

When Atticus woke up from his nap last Sunday and proclaimed, “Biiiiiig poop!” a quick glance indicated it was indeed big and appropriately solid. I was actually kind of pumped up about it, like, “Hey, this will be cool! Atticus will see his poop go down the toilet and he’ll make the connection and want to try using the toilet for real.” As I changed him, I said, “Atticus, do you want to put you poopy in the toilet and flush it down?”

“Poopy… down toilet. OK!”

There we stood in the master bath, in front of the toilet. The big moment had arrived. With almost a flourish, I showed him his diaper’s contents. “Atticus, this is your poopy,” I said, talking louder and slower than necessary. “Mommy is going to put it in the toilet and flush it away. That’s where poopy belongs, in the toilet.” He eyed his excrement warily and had no comment. What was I expecting him to say? “Cool! So that’s what it looks like, huh? All this time, I’ve only been smelling it!”

“Mommy… put in?” he asked, verifying he didn’t have any role in this operation.

“Mommy’s going to put it in now, and then we’ll flush it away and it’ll all be gone!” I chirped. “Poopy go bye-bye!” If I’d weighed that diaper, it would have probably registered at about half a pound or more. I had to shake it a bit before my precious son’s turd landed with an ominously dull splash. I realized too late that it was too big. Because he’d pooped in his sleep, it’d been flattened into a cow patty. and now it obscured the bottom of our efficient, low flush toilet.

Gamely hoping water pressure would do the trick, I said, “Okay! See your poopy in the toilet?” Like he couldn’t see it… even a blind person could have seen it. “Now we can flush it. Why don’t you press the handle?”

Atticus shook his head and backed away. “Mommy flush it.”

Shaking my invisible pom-poms, I said, “Let’s flush!” I held down the handle until the bowl filled to the rim. “Water pressure, water pressure, water pressure,” I repeated silently to myself, like a prayer. The water sloooowly seeped back down, the cow patty hardly disturbed.

“Mommy fix it!”

“Uh, yeah, Mommy will fix it.” The plunger was downstairs, and I didn’t want him to see it, because then he’d want to play with it. “Don’t worry!” I called over my shoulder, as I opened the cabinet under the sink — weren’t there old rubber gloves somewhere? Nope. A coat hanger wouldn’t work. Where was a stick when you needed one?

“Atticus, let’s go to your room. Mommy will fix it.” I got him distracted with toys while I rummaged. Eventually I grabbed a few of his plastic diaper disposal bags and put them over my hand. On my knees, I reached in gingerly and tried to break up the cow patty. It was like a sundried clod of clay I’d dug up out of the yard. Atticus ran back into our bedroom. I quickly stood up and tore the bags off my hand.

“Mommy fix it?”

“Mommy fixed it. Let’s flush it again and it will go down.”

But it didn’t.

I picked him up and put him in his room, got another set of bags and tried again, powered by desperation this time. Pat-pat-pat came the little feet.

“Mommy fix it?”

I pressed the handle. The toilet cleared.

“Yes, Atticus. This time, Mommy fixed it.”