Somehow, suddenly, we are in the thick of potty training.
I was taken completely by surprise by the whole thing happening so quickly.
For months we had been doing the things you’re supposed to do: watching for “signs,” showing Thomas how big people use the potty, letting him sit on the potty, watching potty videos, talking about How Great It Is To Use The Potty, etc.. We had a couple of false starts, where we started putting him in underwear and enticing him with various bribes; during these forays into the undiapered world, he would cooperate enthusiastically for a few days and then suddenly refuse and throw crying/screaming/body-stiffening fits of rage and dismay. So both times we backed off and went back to diapers full-time.
Then all of a sudden, with the help of a train-themed sticker chart and a set of die-cast construction equipment, we are doing it. For real. Crazy.
For over almost three weeks now, Thomas has been in “big-boy pants” all day (even during his nap) and in a diaper at night. He goes potty in public restrooms (actually he loves the public restrooms because the toilets make such a (for him) pleasingly profound loud whooshing noise). The other day he even went potty in a port-a-potty at the park. He is a big boy. He goes potty.
We have had a few (but to me a surprisingly few) accidents. Most of them have happened when I stopped paying attention and forgot to take him to the potty at the crucial 1-hour mark, which I consider to be totally my fault, not his.
But we have had one horrifying accident. In public. Those of you who do not want to hear the gory (poopy) details should just stop reading right now. Seriously.
The accident in question happened a couple of weeks ago. It was Sunday evening. Earlier in the day, we had been out of the house for nearly 4 hours, and Thomas had performed smashingly, using multiple public potties with no problems and no mistakes. I actually had a conversation about it with one of the women who was staffing the nursery at our church.
“Just so you know, he’s potty training and he’s not wearing a diaper. But he just went potty, so he should be fine,” I told her (I was only dropping him off for about 20 minutes, and he’s usually good for a solid hour after a successful visit to the potty). “But if he has an accident, I have extra underwear and pants in my bag. And a diaper.”
“Great,” she said. “You’re prepared. If you weren’t, he would almost certainly have an accident.”
Thomas was such a good boy the rest of the day that I thought I’d treat him to a quick trip to our nearby mall to play at the toy store, which is one of his favorite things to do. I was only planning to stay for 20-30 minutes (I’ve noticed that the toy store employees get annoyed when I’m there for longer than that without buying anything, which I think is stupid, but that’s for another post). I took Thomas to the potty right before we left home, and since he had just gone and had done such a good job all day, I decided to leave the extra pants and diapers at home. Heck, I thought, I’m not planning on buying anything, so I won’t even bring along my purse.
You can all surely hear the church lady’s words of warning and can see where this is going. But at the time I was completely oblivious. I was just looking forward to seeing Thomas’ wonder and amazement at the store’s near-miraculous assortment of cars, trains, and trucks.
Within five minutes of our arrival, I could smell the first sign that we had a problem.
“Are you pooping?” I whispered to Thomas.
“No!” He answered as always.
“Did you already poop?”
“No. I didn’t.”
But he had.
I scooped him up and rushed to the nearest bathroom, which happens to be in the fru-fru independent film cinema just across from the toy store. I took him into a stall and began to survey the damage. It was immense, in size, consistency, and smell. Disgusting.
I took Thomas’ pants off. I decided that, due to the consistency of the item in question, I could not successfully negotiate the situation except by removing the underwear with the contents still inside. I decided maybe I’d better remove Thomas’ shirt just to be safe. I took off his shoes. And should have removed the socks as well, but didn’t. I began trying to slide the underwear slowly down Thomas’ legs, gingerly holding the affected regions of the big boy pants as far away from the legs as I could. I was relatively unsuccessful.
In the meanwhile, the naked-except-for-socks Thomas was alternately sticking his hands in the sanitary napkin container, removing wads of toilet paper from the paper roll, and bending over to try to look under the divider into the next stall. “Stop! Gross! Just stand still!” I was telling him, weighing the grossness of the various parts of the stall against the grossness of my poop-tainted hands and deciding that my hands were grosser. As I finally got the pants down to ground level, I asked him to slowly pick up his feet to step out. Not surprisingly, perhaps, poop ended up on both socks.
Of course, all of this would have been much easier if I had had my bag along. The wipes in particular would have come in handy, but instead I was left to clean up the mess with plain old toilet paper. I did my best (it took a while), then put Thomas’ shirt back on, then put his pants on sans diaper or underwear, and his shoes back on sans socks.
Now what to do with the offending items of clothing? I did not, as you recall, have my bag. Or any bag at all. The only solution I could identify, short of calling Will to come save us (which would have meant many more minutes trapped in the bathroom) was to turn the socks inside out, wad up the underwear and wrap it in toilet paper, and jam all of this into the pocket of my handy-dandy Northface vest.
Sigh.
All this time Thomas was alternating between being enthralled by various gross objects in the bathroom and bemoaning the fact that he didn’t have a chance to play with the trains at the toy store. So, after vigorously washing all four of our disgusting hands, I took him back to play for a couple of minutes. I figured the worst case scenario had already happened and we’d be fine. For at least a few minutes, which is all the longer we stayed.
When we arrived home about 20 minutes later, I handed the lad to his dad and explained the situation. No more instructions were necessary, as Will carried him straight to the shower where he was hosed down and disinfected.
Thankfully, we have not had any repeat incidents of this magnitude. Cross your fingers for us. And the moral of the story: always bring along the bag. Always.
Now, to counteract the disgusting images of this post, here is a cute and poop-free photo:
