Just When I Think Potty Training Isn't Stupid Anymore, It Still Is

For the most part, we've considered Gabe's potty training to now fall into the Win category. Over the past two months he's had a couple accidents in his bed while sleeping, and there have been some minor spills and leaks on clothes, carpet, floors, and pieces of furniture, but he's mostly mastered it. He consistently tells us whenever he needs to go, and we've really not had many problems.

But, because it is such a treacherous walk through his mess of a room and down our somewhat harrowing flight of hardwood stairs to get to the bathroom for him in the middle of the night, should he wake up needing to pee (and because, when he's napping, if he has to go and comes downstairs to do it, there's zero chance of getting him back to bed), we put his little plastic training potty up in his room. Time and again, we've stressed that this is for "emergency" use only and not something for his day-to-day tinkling. This is a nice thought, but one that he's not been particularly interested in abiding by. Especially now that he's spending a few hours of every day playing upstairs on his own where Norah can't mess with him. If he needs to go, and he has the choice between coming all the way downstairs or just dropping trow in his room, he almost always chooses the upstairs option.

Which sucks, because it requires me to CAREFULLY tote the little container down the stairs without splashing it all over myself and my environment, but is still better than the alternative--and, considering him, the ONLY other alternative to going in that potty would be to simply go on the floor in some corner of his room.

Probably the worst part is that his room always smells like pee now. He doesn't seem to care, but it bugs the hell out of me. But, if I remember what boys tend to smell like, especially once they get into high school, there are almost certainly worse things that this room can and will smell like in days to come. So we'll just deal with it for now and hope that he moves beyond the need for the potty in the not-too-distant future.

Today, though, we ventured into new territory.

A little while ago, Gabe came down the stairs to ask for a drink. He wasn't wearing any pants or underwear. I sighed inwardly because I knew this meant he had peed in his potty--which I had just emptied yesterday. For some reason, even though he CAN pull up his pants after he goes, he doesn't have much interest in actually doing so, preferring, instead, to wander around the house half naked until we grab his clothes and help him get dressed again.

"Go back upstairs and put your pants on," I said. "Or your underwear. One or the other."

"Ooooh," he moaned in disappointment. I knew there was about a 90% chance that he wouldn't even try to put them on, but I figure if I keep pestering him about it, eventually he'll have to figure out how to get himself dressed. He trudged back up the stairs and I figured I would follow him in a few minutes to see how he was doing.

A short time passed during which I changed Norah's poopy pants and worked on some laundry (Norah had a pretty good bladder explosion last night and her sheets stank to high heaven, so I had to run everything from her bed). I hadn't forgotten about Gabe's pantslessness yet, but I had already assigned it to the back of my mind.

Then, as I was carrying the kids' clothes into the living room to sort and fold, Gabe came down the stairs and shouted, "I need to wash my hands!"

This isn't an unusual request in and of itself. Gabe likes to wash his hands, and he often eats his food or plays with his play-doh, paints, or markers in just such a way that allows him to spend a few minutes in front of the faucet "washing his hands." But the request almost never comes from upstairs because there isn't much up there that he can make a mess of himself with.

He came down to the foot of the stairs and repeated, "I need to wash my hands." He held up his right hand for me to inspect.

"Oooooooh god," I said to myself. I took a deep breath. "Turn around," I said slowly.

He did so. There, smeared up the small of his back, all over both of his legs, and all of his butt was a mess of poop. That was the mess on his hand, too.

"What did you do?" I asked.

"I pooped in my potty," he informed, pointing upstairs in case I had any doubt where it was located.

"Oh, Gabe," I said, trying not to sound TOO upset. "No pooping in that potty upstairs."

"It's just for emergencies," he explained, knowing that was what was coming next.

"And pooping isn't an emergency. You don't have anything to wipe with up there."

He showed me his hand.

"You don't have any TOILET PAPER up there to wipe with," I amended. "You HAVE to come downstairs if you need to poop."

So we went to the bathroom. I grabbed the wet wipes--because toilet paper wasn't going to be enough for this job--and cleaned him up. He washed his hands, and I followed him back upstairs so he could show me what happened and I could assess the situation. Obviously, I brought the wet wipes up with me, figuring there would be poopy little finger prints all over everything.

But there weren't. Not over EVERYTHING, anyway. A few on the shelf by his toilet, and a couple more on the door which I'm guessing he'd closed for privacy while he did his business then opened back up again when he came down to wash his hands. The potty itself, however, was a disaster. Poop was everywhere. What kind of scatological acrobatics he'd performed after his dump, I can only imagine in my most terrible dreams. But he had even managed to get it on the bottom AND the top of the lid. And all around the seat. And on the side of the potty.

Moreover, he had attempted to cover it all up by pulling the window curtain, which is usually stuck behind the shelf and shielded from his peeing by the toilet lid and other obstacles we've put in its way, over the entire mess. Presumably, he thought he could cover it up with the curtain and it would all go away. If only.

Fortunately, he somehow managed to NOT get any on the curtain, which is good because I didn't have curtain laundering on my list of things to do today. Then again, I also didn't have "soak a training potty in a foot of hot water in the bath tub so that I can remove piles and smears of grimy pooh" on my list of things to do today either. But, being the nature of poop, it always seems to find a way to work itself into my schedule.

And I just have to keep looking on the bright side. At least he didn't decide to wipe with his underwear then hide it somewhere in his room. I'm guessing he'll figure out how to do that in the next few months, though, and then this whole process moves into an even darker and stinkier realm. Not even a high school boy would do something like that (I keep telling myself, hoping it's true).