Let me start by saying I don’t read baby books, EVER. We are ~30 months into this process now (9 preggo, and Alyssa is now 21 months old) and I have yet to read a book, a baby site, none of it. Curious why? I think it’s little more than fear mongering from baby peddlers who want to play on your lack of knowledge or ability to just figure it out. I survived this long without reading books about my teens, 20’s, 30’s, and now pre-middle age so why start now reading about babies. That’s just going to cut into my NBA time or my Yahoo Fantasy Basketball league! I’ve been playing injured players for 3 weeks on that from lack of time already!!
Originally being 40 as a first time Dad I thought would be strange as hell. In hindsight it puts me in a position where I’ve been living life long enough to not let some of the simple bullshit that puts people into a panic bother me. I’m grizzled and old, pissing on the wall is not going to phase me. I’ve seen worse. Hell, I’ve done worse. Maybe one day I’ll write about the glistening phone booth. Not a proud moment, but a moment none the less.
This may be the most time she spent on the potty seat.. when we took it out of the box to show her!!
This story is about PEE…
…and my current quest to help Alyssa get from filling diapers to filling toilets with her pungent bladder liquids. It’s cleaner, easier for me on a day to day basis, and just screams #WINNING to get your kid potty trained ASAP to piss off the other parents around you. We all have seen them.. they are the ones wrangling their 4 1/2 year olds who are running around covered in pee and poop while they cry in the corner wondering how their kid still is going nuts like that and if pre-school will ever give them the thumbs up on being potty trained 🙂
It all started out innocently enough…
…a few months back she started “Michael Jacksoning” as I casually described it over the phone to my wife one late summer afternoon. A solid crotch grab and a grunt, occasionally pointing. What is this little monster? Does it hurt? No. Okay. Do you have to go pee pee? A instant eye flicker tells me I hit the nail on the head. She can’t fully articulate at that time (18-19 months) but gets her point across loud and clear. Give me a shot coach. Just like Mariano Rivera she walked on the mound, umm I mean toilet.. and went to close the game. Pitching pee pee strikes right into the waiting pool of water patiently waiting below. A new harmony between us has been discovered. You can pee without me!
SUCCESS!!!
We basically skipped the small potty. She outright refused sitting on a glorified litter box. Maybe having 3 cats and 3 litter boxes around the house she has seen the difference between where Bandit the 1 eyed kitty pees and where mommy and daddy do their business. Smart enough to know we flush. She handles her own cleaning and flushing after each magic moment.
I feel like this a lot when teaching Alyssa things… it’s why I keep calling her my little monkey.
Now it’s been a few months of this pee routine on and off until 2 weeks ago something in her not so little 98.5% head clicked. She wants to pee in the toilet now, almost like a game. Not only that, she holds it when we go places to unleash toilet hellfire when she returns. From time to time the dam to the river opens and a diaper gets soaked but overall we’re at a solid 40-50% reduction in diapers already. Poop not so much, she is dropping loafs in the diaper like it’s going out of style. Can’t blame her, if I had a diaper on right now I’d probably doo doo the same.
Whew, she is evolving. The Jane Goodall skills I have been working on developing the past 15 years dealing with idiots in business have finally come to use, training my pet monkey ummm daughter! My current reality is that I’m still working at home and playing daycare daddy the best I can. Partly why I’m never around online. Hustling for work, taking care of Alyssa, and trying to teach and advance her mentally and physically has been a lot more work than expected! Maybe someone should have written a book about it or something…. 🙂 hah