Potty Talk

I know I've been an awful blogger for the last 19 days. I promise to stay a little more up to date. I've been spending an unprecedented amount of time with friends lately. It's really been wonderful to catch up with a lot of old friends and spend some quality time with new ones.

Well, Ben and I finally tackled something we'd been dreading for a long time...potty training Ella. She's been ready since she was probably about 18 months old, but as parents, we were still suffering from flash backs of potty training our son who is now 9. That whole multi-year episode nearly put us into family counseling.

Friday night we got the wild hair to train her. I went to Big Lots and bought some presents, wrapped them up and made a lovely display to bribe...I mean 'encourage'...her to go potty. She had no success Friday night but it didn't help that we had friends over and weren't really paying attention. On Saturday I went to Target on my scooter because it was the most beautiful day ever and bought Ella an arsenal of potty training paraphernalia - Pull-Ups, pretty little underwear, new sippy cups for the constant juice drinking she needed to do...still no success.

Underwear does not excite me in the least but I must admit I was really taken by these with Hello Kitty on a scooter. Those simply had to come home with me.

On Sunday night I had just given up. I told Ella we were going back to diapers...no big deal...we'd try again in a month or so...but she insisted on keeping her Kitty Cat pants on so I gave her one more chance. Well hallelujah! It was like the flood gates opened and she became a peeing on the potty fool! Ben and I were high-fiving each other like we actually had something to do with it.

Here's a little commentary about a product I picked up last week (with a coupon I might add, because I really wouldn't have bought this item otherwise.) It's Kids Toilet Paper from Cottonelle. Here's how it works: little paws lead to a doggy where the child is supposed to tear. This is to teach children how much toilet paper to use. Yeah, right. Ella's one and only objective on the toilet was to find the next doggy on the roll. I'm sure this is exactly what the genius who thought of this product was hoping for.

One final potty story and I promise I'm done. My friend Laura e-mailed me this great link to a very entertaining song. Ella actually sings the chorus and we found it to be a very effective potty training tool. Most normal families might find it quite inappropriate to teach to their 2 year old...but we're not most families and we're certainly not normal, so here it is: Poop Goes in the Potty