Day 479 - Ellie Versus the Potty

I've recently become aware of what is likely a little-known parenting insight. The older one's child becomes, the more time and effort it takes to keep up with said child. I know, I know. It's groundbreaking information! 

If you need further proof, check out the #DaddyWrite blog archives. Over the past year, my musings have dropped from 3 to 4 times a week to a miniscule 1 to 2 times a week. The fact that Ellie now only naps once a day for a couple of hours combined with pure exhaustion on my side has led to me not making writing a priority. In all honesty, that's a decision I'm certain future Jesse and future Bethany will lambast me for.

However, I still feel the importance in marking certain occasions in Ellie's life. It just so happens that this occasion is one marked with more pure exhaustion (for Ellie and me) than any that has preceded. The time has come to tell the epic tale of Ellie versus the potty.

I realize that the majority of my reader base has successfully potty-trained a child at one time or another. However, I never realized just how exhausting the process could/would be. In all of my naivety, I believed Ellie was a magical child capable of one day deciding to use the potty for herself with no training whatsoever (Wouldn't that be the best?). Now that she's two years old, it's become evident to me that she is likely incapable of single-handedly training herself to use a toilet. Therefore, Bethany and I have been forced to step up and train her accordingly.

Don't get me wrong here as we've been working with her on using the potty over the last couple of months. That being said, we've really been encouraging her much, much more over the past week.

As is the case in learning any new skill, persistence and consistency is the key. Apparently learning to urinate and defecate in a porcelain bowl is no exception to the rule. Therefore, in order to practice the persistence and consistency that is much needed, today marked Day 1 of a new teaching aid: the 30-minute timer.

To paraphrase the "great" Vin Diesel, today, we're living our lives 30 minutes at time. In between potty breaks, we can do whatever we want. We can swing or play with Legos. We can read books or watch Curious George on TV. We can even make a quick Chick-Fil-A run to get breakfast (Ellie's idea, not mine). However, once that timer blares with the intensity of a siren, Ellie and I both know what it means. 

What? Is it because I called you "great"?

We'll quickly bound up the stairs to the bathroom, me first with Ellie shortly behind. Once there, I will sit down on the floor and help my daughter remove (as she likes to call them) her sweater pants and her diaper. Ellie will then (irrationally) remove her shirt before hopping up onto the toilet via her stepstool. There she will sit as I read through two or three of the six library books we currently have. As you can guess, by the time noon rolled around, we had already been through all of the books multiple times. If that's not a path to insanity, I don't know what is.

Once the deed has been done, she'll hop down from the toilet and allow me to put her diaper back on. Then she'll redress herself before returning to playtime with the knowledge that we will be repeating the process again in 30 minutes.

"But I don't want to use the potty again in 30 minutes, Daddy." (In all truthfulness, this pic was taken a week earlier when Ellie got her hand slapped for pinching Daddy.)

I'd be lying if I said I was enjoying the process of potty training my daughter. However, I couldn't be more proud of her progress. She actually went from 6:00 am this morning until 2:30 this afternoon without a diaper change. When I finally gave in and changed her, it wasn't so much a result of a wet diaper as it was the sticky parts of the diaper no longer stuck.

Of course, once Ellie 100% masters potty training, I'll have a whole new set of problems. Chief among them is having to find my daughter a bathroom with an open stall approximately every 30 minutes. If you're a guy, then you realize that's not the easiest proposition in the world. That leaves me with 2 options: tell her to hold it or swallow my pride and knock on the women's restroom begging for admittance. Truth be told, I'm not looking forward to either option. 

Although, if sitcoms have taught me anything, it's that women's restrooms always have a couch. So I guess that's a positive. #DaddyWrite