Potty Training 201

When I geared up to potty-train my first son, that's exactly what I did-I geared up. I bought a little potty for every room in the house (seriously-almost every room), books about the subject, a big treasure chest of toys and incentives, even lots of new elastic waistband shorts, new underwear, and enticing food and drink! I hired a babysitter to help with Jake, who was 9 months old at the time. I was going to do this right, we were going to work on this for three days without really leaving the house and without any distractions. We woke up the morning of the "big day" and threw our diapers in the garbage, put on some underwear and headed downstairs for breakfast. All the lovely potty training manuals say "feed your child lots of snacks and give them juice and other tasty beverages they love". Max had all his favorite drinks and snacks and we went to the potty every twenty minutes, we were working on muscle memory, you see. Things went fine, for three days we ate, drank, and peed. He had accidents, but they all do. Things turned out fine and I was pleased with my little "bootcamp".


Now it is Jake's turn. He is the exact same age as Max was, 2 years and 8 months. Jake has watched his big brother go potty and likes to go himself from time to time. Especially in public. At home Jake is content to saturate his diaper all day. But on a trip to the zoo, he wants to go potty every half hour. Jake has also been accompanying me in taking Max to school and dropping him off for a year and a half and VERY MUCH wants to go to school himself. This is the ammo I will use. No juice, no bootcamp, just a Batman backpack and a promise of school days ahead. He seriously loves his backpack and drags it around the family room while babbling about school. So we woke up one morning, threw away the diapers, put on some Batman underwear (the only new clothes he has) and said we were "potty training". No babysitter, no little potties all over the house, some toys in a mixing bowl as prizes, and the threat of no school. We're off! Literally, two hours later we pack up the whole family in the car to head to our Wisconsin lakehouse for the weekend. Potty training on the road, we called it. We got McDonalds to eat in the car, but no drinks. Not even for Max. Can you think of anything saltier and more thirst-producing that McDonald's fries? Poor kids. They eat their food and in an hour we are there. We all get out and talk about running in the house and taking turns on the potty. We get to the door and I look at my keyring in disbelief, NO LAKEHOUSE KEY!!! What?? Oh Jeez. Did I mention this was Memorial Day Weekend and we had been so smart to leave early and beat the traffic? Now I feel bad for Jake. He has been holding it for two hours, his first morning of potty training has consisted of two trips to the potty. He doesn't want to go in the bushes, either. We drove to the other side of the lake and took him to the nice facilities of a biker bar. He liked the blue water in the toilet, that was new. We couldn't rush back home to get the keys, we were waiting for our boat to be delivered from winter storage. The boat came and we all piled back in the car. Jake was getting sleepy and crabby and protested (loudly) the idea of returning to the biker bar blue water potty. We drove home with two sleeping boys in the minivan. But it was too late to return to the lakehouse now. The traffic was at a standstill heading north into Wisconsin. We had dinner at home and tried to encourage Jake to use the potty now. We even gave him juice and Sprite- but, too late. His idea of being "potty trained" is "holding it as long as you can". Even after two weeks he still like to wait two to three hours between potty trips. We will be heading to downtown Chicago for a Book Festival, there will be nothing but Port-O-Potties. He will probably want to use those every half-hour. Lucky me, I am working at the festival. it will be Mike who spends the day in and out of everyone's least favorite place in the Northern Hemisphere.