monkeys and marbles

last night when dinner was done, Zander told us he had to “go pee pee on da toilet!”.  this has actually, to our happy surprise, become a regular occurrence over the last few days.

some of you (those who followed me over from my first blog) may remember that we attempted to get Zander into the whole potty thing.  he thought it was pretty neat at first, peeing in it a few times and enjoying the accolades he received when he did his thing.  then the novelty wore off, and he didn’t want to have anything to do with it.

fast forward 7 months.  on Friday afternoon we asked him if he wanted to sit on the potty and pee.  he said yes (which surprised me since i’ve been asking him every once in a while for the past few months and the answer was always no), so we asked if he wanted to sit on the big toilet or the potty.  big-boy-wannabe that he is, he wanted to sit on the toilet with his Diego toilet seat.

so off hubby and Zander go to the bathroom while i played with Logan.  to be honest, i wasn’t expecting anything.  in the past the only thing he has done on the toilet is waste play with the toilet paper.  suddenly i hear hubby cheering, so i race to the bathroom to see big smiles on both their faces.   Zander, brimming with pride, said “a peed on da toilet, mummy!”.  even though he had peed on the potty before, this was different.  i could tell he really understood what he had done this time…i could see it in his face and hear it in his voice.

later, after dinner, he said he had to pee on the potty, so we put him on the potty and within 30 seconds he peed.  just like that.  and Saturday morning, as soon as we got him out of bed, he said he had to go pee on the toilet, and he did.  this has been going on since Friday.  he knows he has to pee, he asks to go on the toilet or potty, and he goes.  not every time, of course.  the kid is so busy in Zander-world most of the day that it will take a while for him to use the potty full-time, but this is definitely an excellent start!.

what happened yesterday, however, was completely unexpected.  he was sitting on the potty in front of the TV (don’t judge ;-)) after dinner.  he had already had a little pee, but i knew a bigger one was coming, so i asked him to sit on it a little while longer.  then he turned to look at me and said “a pooped mummy”…so matter of fact, like this was an everyday occurrence.  i checked, and sure enough my son had pooped for the first time in the potty.

i have heard so many horror stories from friends and family about trying to get kids to poop on the toilet or the potty.  my cousin’s daughter was so scared to do it, and later they found out that she thought her “insides” were falling out…how awful!  i was just expecting….i don’t know what i was expecting, but i didn’t expecting him just to poop!

anyway, i’m realistic enough to know that he might not want to poop on the potty again for a while.  but the fact that there was no trauma or anything gives me hope that it won’t be too hard.

plus he didn’t pick his poop out of the potty to show me…that’s a bonus, right?