Potty Talk

For quite some time now Monkey has been aware of his need to potty. He seeks out appropriate privacy and shows other classic signs but the piece that has been missing is his ability or desire to communicate to us what is occurring. Obviously, there were a few non-verbal cues that we would pick up on but he never indicated to us by speech or by sign that he’d soiled his diaper. If we took off his diaper he would let us know, in no uncertain terms, that we were to put a new one on right now, thank you very much.

He had some success with peeing in the toilet or his potty chair as long as 18 months ago but he never sought us out or initiated the process. He would pee, or try very hard to pee, on request but that was it. Once he started school, going to the potty became a part of his everyday schedule. After observing the process for a while he decided he too wanted to go potty. He would join his friends in line for the toilet and pee into the toilet standing up. We were even informed that one of his great friends at school (a little boy) was being very helpful about showing Monkey how to aim. Around this time he decided he didn’t want to use the potty chair at home.

We were fine giving up the potty chair for the toilet but our toilet is much taller than the pre-school toilet. He had difficulty hitting his mark, so to speak. I’m not sure if he was discouraged or just not a fan of the adult sized toilet but soon his potty strike extended from the potty chair to the toilet at home and we’ve been stuck ever since. If we ask him if he wants to go potty he will sign “all done, all done, all done” and run away. We don’t want to push the issue so we decided to back off. He continued to participate at school so we weren’t too worried.

I’m not sure how long we would have elected to wait if he hadn’t discovered a rather disturbing pastime. What I’m about to share is fairly gross. I know parents of special needs kids will be familiar with this sort of thing but I want to warn anyone who is even slightly squeamish about poop to just hit the back button and skip the rest of this one. Really.

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I’m ready to get this potty training thing in high gear. He sat on and successfully peed in his potty tonight before his bath. He tells us when he needs a diaper change, he goes off for privacy when he need to go #2. Does he sound ready to you guys?

We had hoped to send Monkey to daycare for the day so I could go to work and Duhdee could finish installing the new toilet we bought this weekend as part of our ongoing remodel but the daycare was full! I ended up staying home to watch him because we NEED a toilet!

It turns out that it was a good thing I did stay home too! Duhdee definitely needed a hand with the sheetrock on the ceiling and when he changed the shut-off valves for the sink. It turns out he had shut off only the cold water to our bathroom and to Great Grampy’s when he thought he’d shut off the cold and hot in our bathroom. This was discovered when he took off the old hot water shut-off valve and water sprayed across the room. I used 3 buckets to catch the bulk of the water while he ran downstairs and shut off the water to the whole house until he could figure out the problem. It was messy but a fan quickly dried up the water that I didn’t catch. It would have been a lot worse if we hadn’t had 2 people!

Other than manning the buckets I pretty much just hung out with the kid…I’m so lucky! Monkey was being very cute. In the morning I filled up the water fountain in the office because it was almost empty. Later, while I was making some sweet tea, Monkey came to the kitchen, grabbed the measuring cup I had used to fill the fountain earlier then went in and pretended to fill the fountain himself.

During nap time he was a little less cute though. I put him down and he pooped, then fingerpainted with it before falling asleep. I didn’t realize what he’d done until he was sound asleep. I let him sleep as long as I could stand it then we woke him up and cleaned him up. *GAG* Folks, I suggest you buy stock in Clorox wipes because this is starting to become a habit for him. Ick.