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There She Grows

Many children aren’t fully potty trained until age 3… and that’s ok.   But I figure, starting to introduce the concept earlier can’t hurt as long as I don’t push things.   Lilah has shown some signs of readiness for awhile.  She’s known the words  poopoo and peepee for months now and uses them accordingly.  More and more often, she lets me know when she has gone.   Over the holidays I found a book about potty in Nanny’s stash, and read it to Lilah.  She was immediately interested.      So I decided it was time to get her a potty chair.

I looked a bit online for info about which to get, and was surprised to learn how decked out potties are these days.   Some play music while baby sits, and congratulatory sounds when  baby goes.   Some make flushing noises and even dispense  stickers as a reward.   Fancy potties such as those seem to get the best reviews, but I figured I’d start with a plain and simple potty.  It transitions to a child seat that can be put on the real toilet for later use, and also doubles as a stepstool.  They pretty much all have those basic features.

After Lilah’s first day of school,  we went to the store together to get the potty.   We went into the bathroom that night to take our shower and she immediately gravitated toward this new addition in the room, pointing it out and calling it a potty.  yay!   I took off her clothes and she went to sit on the potty all by herself.  I had to help her sit farther back though.   Then I sat down across from her on the real toilet,  and we both peed.    I couldn’t believe she did it the very first time she sat on the thing.  Totally awesome.   She was pretty psyched about the whole experience.   She kept pointing in there exclaiming, “pee pee! pee pee!”

I guess it was just good timing; she happened to need to go right then.   After our shower she immediately wanted to do it again, but no longer had to go.   I was thrilled with her enthusiasm so I helped her back on and she waited, expecting to pee.  But nothing happened.   This frustrated her a great deal.  She doesn’t yet understand that she can’t just make this happen at any time.    Unfortunately this frustrated her so much that she has been unwilling to try it again.

On the advice of some books,  I brought the potty out of the bathroom and into the playroom for now.   She likes to sit there to read and look at toys, etc.   She is loving the potty as her little personal chair, which is apparently a good early step to take.    I will soon provide it in the bathroom again before our showers.

At her 18 month doc appointment I was told to start introducing words for pee and poo, and  I told them that Lilah has known that stuff forever.   In general I sometimes feel like they are doubtful when I talk about Lilah’s verbalness.  “most babies this age know about 15 words” they say… when I estimated that Lilah knows over a hundred.   They seemed impressed to hear that she had peed on the potty once already, and said we are ahead of the game.   I don’t want to get ahead of ourselves to the point of deterring her from the potty out of frustration, but I’m happy to begin this with a very casual approach… and glad to see some signs of readiness.