it's potty time, excellent!

Nate's World! Nate's World! Thad and I made a New Year's resolution on Nate's behalf - to have him potty trained sometime this year. We had hoped he'd have been potty trained last year, but that didn't go according to plan. His teachers have a policy of sitting on the potty whenever they change a diaper, so we decided to institute something similar here. It worked okay for a few days and then turned into a battle royale. A few days ago, Nate was almost hyperventilating at the idea of sitting on the potty (I'm not being sarcastic, I swear!) So I used the small portion of my brain that is functioning and realized that he has used the potty at other people's houses and at school, and all of these were a different potty than the one we own. Nate confirmed that he would indeed use a different potty and would like a red one. So yesterday afternoon I went to the store and found a potty matching that very description, which I proudly presented to him and then went along my merry way assuming Nate will be in diapers long past the point when he can change them himself.

Fast forward a few hours... We had a fun dinner at our place with Saydee, one of Nate's friends from school, and her parents. After eating, the adults were in the living room and the kids were playing happily right around the corner in our kitchen. Nate waltzes into the living room with no pants or diaper, holding the potty insert for all to see, and proclaims, "I did poopies in the potty." Lo and behold, Nate in fact did poopies in the potty! You could have knocked me over with a feather. I was actually stunned and for a minute thought Nate was trying to pass Saydee's poop as his own. Then I remembered that he is three and doesn't know how to do that yet. And Saydee was still fully dressed, so the owner of the poop seemed pretty clear.

I was nursing Anja, so Thad accompanied Nate and Saydee back to the bathroom. Nate put the pot back on the potty and tried again, but to no avail. He stood up and double-checked to see if anything new had appeared (it hadn't). He then stood up, picked up the potty, and tipped it into the toilet. His aim, however, is not that good, and instead of going into the bowl, the poop landed on the seat. Acting out of some bizarre instinct, Nate then reached out and picked up the poo. Upon realizing that he now had a handful of poop, he shook violently and screamed in horror, "Get it off! Get it off!" So Thad picked him up, washed his hands, cleaned the poo off the potty and toilet, and realized that he never checked if Nate wiped his bum. He hadn't. So Thad bent Nate over and started wiping. Like many a curious three-year-old, Saydee then said, "Let me see!" A minute later, Nate asked her, "Did you see in my anus?"

After the poop escapade, Nate and Saydee decided to run a marathon in our house. Although they didn't technically run a full marathon, it felt like one to the bystanders. Apparently, Saydee has never run anywhere before, so this was quite a shock to her parents. Nate was much faster than Saydee, so to compensate she would take a swipe at the alphabet magnets when she ran past the fridge and Nate would then stop to pick them all up. After returning the magnets to their rightful spot on the refrigerator, he'd catch up with her just as she reached the kitchen again and the magnet routine would be repeated. The pair ran laps around our house for at least a half hour, and after miscalculating that the kids ran 600 feet, Thad rechecked his math and determined more accurately that they had run over a mile, and probably closer to a mile and a quarter. Needless to say, after all that pooping and running, Nate slept well.

In related news, Anja, who still poops a lot but does not yet run, also slept great! It was the best night we've had so far. I'm sure I'm jinxing tonight by sharing, but she ate right before bed, only woke up once around 2am, and then slept until 7. Then this morning while I was nursing her she smiled at me. I'm still not sure if it was her first "social smile" or if she was just gassy, but it was great nonetheless.