All Aboard the Potty Train

Shortly after finishing breakfast this morning, Price walked over to me, took off his diaper and said, "No diaper, I want underwear."   After picking my jaw up off the floor (because just yesterday I was telling a friend that Price was no where near ready to potty train), and being impressed with my son's ability to express his desires both verbally and through action, it hit me that I really might have to potty train my kid. Before he goes to college.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of the diaper.  I don't like how much they cost, I am bothered by all the space they take up in landfills (I swear if we have more children, I'm doing cloth diapers), and the little absorption gel thingys creep me out.  Because I want to see exactly how much the gel thingys can actually absorb  am cheap and eco-conscious, I tend to be a little lax in my diaper changing frequency.  Not poopy diapers mind you, those come off as soon as the smell arrives, but the wet diapers- well, he's not a girl, they don't bother him and they hold a lot.  So, most days he often goes several (and by several there have been days when several could mean as many as four) hours without a new diaper.

Until today.  Today when he decides, that since he is now sleeping in a big boy bed, he must also wear big boy underwear.  Today, when I had a meeting and several errands to run.  Today,when we are just a few days away from leaving for a long awaited vacation to a foreign country where I may have some difficulty asking where a restroom is since I don't speak the language.

Thankfully (I think this is a good thing, except when she tells me stuff I know, but don't want to do), my mom is a potty training master.  She could (and should) write a book on the subject.  And thankfully she was home every time I called her today to ask if it was normal for my child to pee everywhere, except in the potty, every 20 minutes or so.  And she assured me that it was and I just need to, for the next few (overly scheduled) hundred million days or so, take him to the bathroom often and reward him whenever he tinkles on the potty.  Hence, the jar of M&M's on the back of the toilet.  Yes, candy in our bathroom-  I find it oddly disturbing and cheerful at the same time.

Once we finally got home after he made a giant puddle in the middle of the BX food court at lunch and I had changed him into his fifth pair of (hastily purchased because the three existing pair we already owned obviously weren't going to cut it) new underpants and fourth outfit and second pair of shoes and cleaned up tinkle in my kitchen, living room (yes, Don if you're reading this he pee'd on the couch-but not on the cushions because he took those off so he could jump on the springs down on to the cushions), laundry room and all around his potty chair for all the poor aiming- we actually made it 3 whole hours without an accident!  Thanks in large part to the kitchen timer going off every 15 minutes to remind me it was time to go tinkle.

I never thought I'd miss changing a diaper, and we haven't even started working on pooping yet!