POTTY TRAINING BOOT CAMP (Parts 1 & 2) -by Jon

Yesterday morning Angie headed out the door and told me since she was running late and Kaden was still sleeping that whenever he got up I could just bring him up to school.  This seemed like a simple enough plan and should not be too hard of a task for me to accomplish. I turned the monitor up to make sure that I could hear when he got up, then I fell back to sleep.  I did not fall hard asleep because I knew that I would be hearing the knock on Kaden’s bedroom door followed by, “Somebody come get me”.  I looked at the clock and saw 8:00 roll around, I then saw 8:15 followed by 8:30 and I could hear him breathing but knew he wasn’t up playing around.  This was weird for a kid that rarely sleeps past 7:30.  At 8:45 I decided that I should get him up so he could go to school. (It was cookie making day and he did not want to miss this)  I opened the door and saw him asleep in his chair and not the bed, something he will occasionally do.  But I noticed that he had no diaper on and his feet were “dirty”.  Just then I feel a squish under my foot.  I looked down and saw I had stepped in one of two huge logs of poop.  Something that he must have also done because there were tracks all over his carpet.  I was honestly shocked at what had happened.  This was not the first time that I have walked into my house with poop on the floor but usually I just rub Molly’s nose in it scold her and open the back door for her to go out.  I don’t think that same method would work here, especially because I am not sure that rubbing Kaden’s nose in it would be looked upon favorably by CPS.  

            I scooped him up and hobbled into the bathroom trying to be careful not to track the poop that was on the bottom of my foot through the house.  I decided that scolding and locking him in the back yard was also not the best way to handle it, so I asked him why and he just said that his tummy hurt last night and did not want to talk about it.  I cleaned both of us up, found out we were out of carpet cleaner, fixed some breakfast, got him dressed, and took him to school.   After I got him to school I went to Wal-Mart to get some carpet cleaner.  When I got back I walked into his room and the two huge logs WERE GONE!!!  I did not see burn marks so I am ruling out spontaneous combustion, and I believe God can still do miracles, but I am pretty sure he did not want those logs for anything, so my best guess as to what happened is a far more disgusting incident.   I am sad to say that I think Molly ate them.   It makes me sick to think about it but I have no other explanation as to where they could have gone.  The tracks of poop were still all there, and smears of poop were still there, but the big logs were not.  I love my dog to death but I am so grossed out at her right now.  Maybe she thought that she was helping, or at least helping Kaden not get in trouble. But whatever the case I don’t want her face near my face anytime soon.  After a thorough cleaning with 2 types of carpet cleaner, I decided that the rest of this week Kaden would stay home with me to attend potty training boot camp.

 

BOOT CAMP DAY ONE!

            I decided that today we would follow a schedule, a VERY strict schedule.  No diapers (Except for Nap) and every 10 minutes Kaden would sit on the potty to try to go.    Kaden got up at 7:30 in a cheerful manner which I thought was a plus.  I told him that today was the day that we learned to use the potty and we started our day off by sitting on the potty.  After a few minutes of nothing, we came in the living room and he saw a movie his aunt Allison got him and he asked to watch it.  We set it up and got through the previews and the timer went off, so we sat on the potty…still nothing.   We started the movie and not much time had past and he asked for some cereal.  So I fixed the cereal the timer went off and bribed him with the cereal to sit on the potty…still nothing.  We continue with the movie and when the timer went off I said “Time to go Potty”, and I knew that he would get difficult at some point and throw a fit about leaving the movie to go to the potty, so I brought the Mountain to Mohamed (or the potty to Kaden) He thought that it was great that he could sit on his potty and still watch the movie….but with all the sitting we did not have one trickle of pee or one pellet of poop.  This continued through the morning as he guzzled down milk and had three bowls of cereal, he would sit but not go.  The movie ended and we started playing in his play room.  We played ball, we played “buckin Bronc” on his spring horse, we wore hats, and we played Dr. with his fisher price doctor set.  All the while stopping down every 10 minutes to try to go with no luck.  I quickly realized I had been matching Kaden drink for drink with sweat tea and that I needed to go.  And when I was in the restroom I hear Kaden say, “Daddy it is time to go potty” as the timer is going off.  I hop up and rush in the living room to see Kaden standing next to the potty in his urine soaked undies saying “I went potty”.  Well he went alright, just not in the potty.  I predicted that he would have an accident at some point so I pulled new undies out of my pocket cleaned him up and put on the new ones.  At this point it was getting pretty close to lunch time.  Knowing that he had just gone I did not set the timer, and started making lunch.  I reheated leftovers and got his food together because I told him we could have a picnic in the play room.  Just as I get everything together he comes into the kitchen and asked if I would come play with him.  I look down at him and realize that his new blue undies are now two toned.  The regular blue they started out and the dark blue of being all wet in the crotch area.  Again we cleaned up and changed undies again.  We ate lunch and after some long drawn out convincing I talked him into sitting on the potty again right before I was going to put him in a diaper for nap time.  He was not happy about this and did not want to be there, but all of the sudden in mid tantrum I looked down and realized that he was actually peeing in the potty.  I think that it scared him at first because I got super excited and he was not sure what was going on because my mood went from struggling to keep him on the potty to clapping and jumping, but his crying quickly changed when I broke out the potty candy.   A white “Airhead” and a pack of gummies got a smile on his face very quickly.   He was also fascinated that his yellow pee on top of the blue potty turned green.  He kept saying “its green daddy it is green”  Although I am all about teachable moments, I figured a lecture in the color spectrum, additive and subtractive colors and the difference between rgb and cmyk should be held off until another time.

Not that he is totally potty trained but I am very glad to see some progress in Potty Training Boot Camp Day One!

The Casualties of War

The new Froggy Potty ready for Battle

The super pooper trooper

The Fruits of our Labor

Mission 1 Accomplished!