Three signs that your child isn't ready for potty-training.
April 12, 2007

We bought James a potty seat for his second birthday. You must understand that this is no boring, run-of-the-mill potty seat--this is a Dora the Explorer potty seat. It's nice and cushioned and it's dotted with pictures of Dora, her nifty backpack, and her monkey-buddy Boots. But the best detail? It has the word "vaminos!" printed all over it [note: vaminos is the spanish equivilant of "let's go!"--very appropriate, don't ya think?]

Inititally, James seemed quite excited when he opened the potty-seat. He pulled it out of the gift bag, unwrapped the tissue paper, and locked eyes with one of the little Dora characters. "Oh wow!" he said, "Mommy o-pen?" Well of course! I took the seat out of it's crunchy plastic housing and handed it to James. He immediately put in on top of his little head, smiled an enormous smile and said "Nice hat! Hat!" And this my friends, was the first indication that my child might not be ready for potty training.

Jared and I made a quick decision and agreed that the best approach was to let James casually play with the potty a bit---that way he could discover for himself how much fun these things really are! When Jared and I left the living room a few minutes later, he was proudly sporting his new hat as he rode his little bike around the living room. When we returned a moment later, he was running over the potty seat with his bike...repeatedly. Forward, reverse, *snicker*, forward, reverse, *snicker, forward, reverse, *snicker*. Clearly, this was our second sign that James is not ready to be potty trained.

And the third sign was clearly delivered to us on our balcony. James likes to stand on top of a cooler so he can watch the action over our second story porch railing (he's developing his neighborly eavesdropping skills early). I was supervising this cooler-standing-stunt when he casually mentioned the potty seat..."Mommy, where d'potty?" I mistakenly interpreted this interest as a glimmer of hope. So we went inside, fetched the potty and resumed our nightly cooler perch. I handed James the potty seat, he proudly held it with both hands and proclaimed "now I frow it! Weady, set..." Fortunatly, I intercepted the seat before its imminent release. James was dissapointed. "Nooooo...I frow it!!!!!"

Sorry big guy, but that Dora potty-seat was $12 and your mommy is on a budget. We're not tossing it off the balcony, we're not running it over with the bike, but I see no reason why you can't wear it as a hat. So Happy Birthday buddy, I sure hope you enjoy your awesome new headwear (?).

1 comment:

The Ramos Family said...

Ok, so I found my way to your family blog, yes I am stalking you, but as a fellow stay-at-home-mom I am sure you understand.

We went through this spell about 3 months ago where Manny was convinced (and so was I) that he was interested in potty-training. Purchased a really cute Elmo potty (that Manny picked out) and we tried to use it. It didn't take too long before Manny stopped telling us when he had to use the potty and now, he uses the potty to store legos.

*Disclaimer to this story: the potty has NEVER been used as an actual potty and has barely had a cute little baby bum sit on it. That is how I feel confident in letting him play legos in it. I paid $15 for that thing and if he isn't going to use it instead of a diaper, he might as well use it for legos.