We've Reached That Time

It's finally come.  The time that I both anxiously awaited and frantically dreaded has finally come.  We have now started to potty train.  A task that I have to give credit to my wife for initiating.  If it was up to me, I'd leave the kid in diapers until he was old enough to change his own diaper.

In all honesty, this training actually started about 4 months ago.  My wife brought home a potty, just to introduce him to the concept.  Se explained it to him and at first it seems that he understood.  That is until we caught him dragging it to living room.  Apparently you don't know luxury until you've watched Dora from the toilet. 

Our next attempt was demonstrate using a toilet in from of him.  He would barge in on my wife  relieving herself, which resulted in my son using toilet paper to wipe his sack every time he sat down on the damn thing. 

Next up to bat was yours truly, who started demonstrating the standing up method.  This quickly went down in flames, when my son remembered how much he enjoyed running his fingers under an open faucet.

So a few months have passed, baby brother will be here in the next couple of weeks, and my wife decided it was time to try again.  And I believe she was right.  He now understands the concept, and what he's supposed to do.  It doesn't hurt, that she's created a reward system of M&M's (also known as beans by the child) to help motivate him.  2 beans for #1, and 4 beans for #2.  Fortunately for me (the person cleaning the potty), we've only had #1 but he's managing to use it regularly now.  All for the sake of getting those damn beans that he holds up high as if  were carrying the Stanley Cup.  His face beaming with both pride and a sense of accomplishment.  It's quite an adorable sight to see.

However, we have discovered a couple of downsides to the potty training:

• Downside #1, he has discovered that it's also an effective stall tactic for going to bed.  He'll claim that he needs to pee, and he'll sit on that potty for as long a he can milk.  The little turd actually had the balls to ask us for a book one night. 

• Downside #2, once he gets his mind set on those beans, he's not giving up until he gets them.  Whether he needs to go or not.  Whether he went 5 minutes ago or an hour ago.  Whether you are late to work or not.  On more than one occasion, I've had to pull a pissed off, bare assed boy out of the bathroom kicking and screaming.  This morning, I actually had to chase his diaper-less ass around the house. 

So here's to the good and the bad, and hoping he'll be out of diapers soon.  Because with two kids in diapers, would really suck and really stink.