When I make up my mind to do something, especially with regard to parenting, I do it. I hate being half-assed. I either decide I’m going to be very, very lazy about something, or completely obsessive compulsive. I’m like Dr. Spock and Mr. Mom. One minute I’m the sleep training Nazi, next I’m letting my kid having a snack of M&Ms and chocolate milk while watching 3 episodes of Dora in a row.
Enter the vicious world of potty training.
I had it in my OCD (or CDO if you’re Busy Mom) head that my son would be trained by the ripe old age of three. Enter Dr. Spock. Or Dr. Something.
First, I obsessively asked my son every minute if he wanted to wear underwear. Next, I twittered my few tweeps to see what the consensus of non-OCD moms were.
Then I made a decision. We were going cold turkey. Child-led, shmild-led, I had enough of diapers and thus, it was time to get rid of them. And as my husband said to my father, “she’ll be damned if this doesn’t work.” So we made the ceremonial visit to Target to procure the goods. You know, the tighty whities with various Disney characters on them. No tags! No Thomas! Of course they only had one freaking pack of Lightning McQueen toddler 4T left. Apparently, all three-year-olds are picky about who they wear on their ass. We scooped up the last pack.
And, we needed some bribery gifts. Gift du jour? More animals. Thank the Schleich g-ds the polar bear and doggie he picked out don’t have genitalia to speak of. I couldn’t deal with that. It’s bad enough the kid is diddling his you know what all day now that it’s free in the land of cotton.
That was Tuesday.
Yesterday was Day 2 of the Great Underwear Experiment. One trip to school in underwear, one poop on the potty, one nap and afternoon poop in a diaper, back to underwear for dinner time today, three loads of laundry later and I’m not sure how successful we are.
But we’re doing it, and that’s half the battle of parenting, right?
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