Potty Training

Last wednesday, Lisa watched Jonas for half a day, and when I arrived to pick him up, he greeted me completely naked and (as usual) half heartedly as he knew this meant he would soon be leaving the beloved "mamas house". Anyway, Lisa said she made a deal with Jonas, that he could be naked, but only if he used the potty, and he agreed. Since he is apparently perfectly capable of regulating his bodily functions, and halfway to potty trained in 4 hours, I decided we should probably let him stay naked the rest of the day, much to his joy.

At the end of day one, Jonas was doing very well. He'd peed in the potty handfulls of times, and only wet one diaper during his nap. Yay! The next morning I got him up, and he asked to be "ne-ed bie!" (naked boy!) again, so sure, why not? Again, no problems, he even pooped in the potty (an enormous turd for such a small kid... is his colon even that big?!) anyway, he was thrilled, i'm thrilled because i've only used 2 diapers in the past 2 days. sweeeet!

So, later that day we went to wal mart. Now, Jonas has been doing awesome at this potty thing, so I decided to not puncture his pride, and let him wear underwear to the store. This was a mistake. I expected to possibly have an accident, so I (naturally) prepared for 2 in a 20 minute period. Accident one: before we got out of the car (a 2 minute drive). He did pretty well in the store. Then "uh oh, pee mommy, pee!" by the fish tanks. great. I prepared extra clothes, forgot about something to clean up with. So I carry my soaking son through the store to the bathroom. we change, we sit on the potty, I grab a gigantic wad of paper towels to head back to the fish to clean up the pee. we start back. we get 20 yards from the bathroom when jonas says he has to pee again... uh oh. we run back... nothing. at this point I rendezvous with brandon and he is unable to take joe as his arms are full of stuff. I decide to head back to the fish. I get there, there is a wal mart associate and several others on the usually empty asile getting fish. awkwarddddd... we decided to just let it go... water on the floor near the fish tanks is no big deal, and (of course) jonas is struggling to get free by now. we make it to the car without incident. by the time I get home, accident #3 has happened, poor guy. I got him out and put him to bed for a nap, and he was naked boy the rest of the day. from this, we gleaned that perhaps he was unaware one needs to control bodily functions when wearing clothes, so we pledged to work on it.

Friday came and went quickly. Lisa got Jonas in the morning, we got some work done, I went to a horseback riding lesson that beat my butt into shape, we went to the Kennedys for dinner, we came home. Jonas' potty training adventure was still going well.

Saturday. We started introducing pants. Oh, and I should mention for when I read this in 10 years, the past few weeks have been the coldest weeks in 25 years in NC. Like, bearly at freezing if that, and since we are poor, we've kept our heat down... so this kid has been happy and naked at 65-70 degrees. way too cold for me. Anyway... pants. It went ok-ish. I thought we should try seeing how he did with underwear for his nap, and I have to say, he didn't wet himself. However, he did do something hilarious and disasterous....

I heard him fussing in his room so I went to see if he needed to pee. I kept the light off to keep him from waking up any more than necessary, but when I put my hand on his bed, there was something sticky on it. "oh, no, he's pooped everywhere!" is my first thought. *flick* the light is on.... no poop. but there is something there. my son is shining like he just ran a marathon, his hair is sticking up like he's at a punk rawk show, his shirt looks wet, his pillow and most of the bed also look wet, so I thought he must have peed... no, that doesnt make sense. Oh, no. He got into the vasoline! Yes, he did. and there were 2 GIANT globs on the handle to the drawer containing the vasoline, where he had returned it (most likely to keep me from noticing, lol!). It was way to funny to be upset. Luckily, Julie was there as well as Brandon, so we all came in and laughed at Jonas, who was by this time crying his eyes out. We got him as clean as we could with him bawling, and I comforted the poor embarrased little guy. I asked him what he needed, and he told me "butt ow". "did you want to put some on your butt to make it feel better?" "Saaas!"(yes!) (he immediately stopped crying to tell me this.) Ok, this makes sense. of course, he got it everywhere BUT his sore butt... poor thing. too funny!

Later that evening, we had girl's only (over 2) night... Julie, Nicole, Dayna (and Jensen) and Obi came and we watched a movie.... then we had fun chatting and trying to figure out what eachother were saying. The boys (Brandon, Danny & Nathan) got back from poker around midnight, and then we all stayed and talked for another hour or so until Brandon and I were too tired to do anything but sleep. As this is mainly a journal about Jonas, I won't bother with many fun details, except that Jonas thought it would be a good idea to show Jensen his butt. He did an about face and exclaimed "BUTT!". Jensen did not look like he cared much for Jojo's butt. odd...

Jonas did ok on sunday.. he peed 5 times for Ellen, craziness! He is doing so well! Today, however, we began the power struggle. As we are tired of "ne-ed bie!", we started to insist on clothes. Jonas protested by having "accidents". I bet we went through 10 pairs of clothes... probably more, actually. As soon as he would pee and we would try to get his pants off in time and on the potty, he would stand up from peeing and say "no pats, mama, ne-ed bie!". We would keep putting more pants on him though, and he finally got angry about this and decided to play in the pee. I then told him he had to get showered off because that was yucky. He was thrilled. Awesome, it backfired again. Or did it? I totally used cold water. He has not peed in his pants since. Win!