"Potty Training Brings Mother To Her Knees"

Disclaimer: This post is primarily about poop. Read at your own risk of inducing gag reflex.

I don't really like to write about the progress (and regression) of potty training with Sage mainly because it is my least favorite part of parenting to date and I am hoping that my brain will erase all memory of this trial much like the brain does when a person has been seriously physically or emotionally traumatized. However, the last two days have been a wide range of disgusting moments and jump-in-the-air victories that I can't help but share them.

First off, no. 1 has been going very well with very few accidents in a long while. No. 2, on the other hand, has been a virtual nightmare. To date Sage has only done that duty in the toilet a handful of times, the rest have been...well, there are few other options left so you can figure that one out. Is she afraid of it? No, I don't think so because when she has gone it wasn't that big of a deal to her. Is it a power struggle? Perhaps and if it is then she is winning and I'm clueless as to how to gain control of this situation. Bribes have worked but once the reward has been achieved she has gone back to her old routine of waking up in the morning or after a nap and notifying me that she has pooped in her pants--which really isn't necessary because I can smell it on the other side of the house. Trust me, I have tried everything. My only glimmer of hope has been that most kids seem to figure it out at some point, I'm just hoping I'll be able to send her to school because I'm pretty sure that "daily cleaning of poopy pants" is not on a teacher's job description.

That brings us to a couple of days ago. I knew Sage was up from her nap when I heard her talking in her room so I ran upstairs to get her, hoping that she had not done her thing yet but once I opened the door I could smell that I was too late. She looked at me as if I had just interrupted an important business meeting between her and the dolls and then said to me "Mommy, go out there. Please shut the door." I asked her, "Should we clean you up first?" "No." I obliged, figuring I would like a little more alone time as well. About ten minutes later I heard her open the door and head to my room. She walks in and drops this bombshell "Mommy want to clean the poop on the bed?" WHAT???!!!! I head to her room and right there, smeared across the bed, was my breaking point. Noooooooo. She had dug into her pull-up and then wiped what she had found onto her bed. Then I realize that she is walking around touching who knows what with that same hand. I race back to her and grab the nearest pack of wipes and start tearing one after the other out as I wash her hands, even getting under the finger nails, and then for good measure, wipe down then the rest of her body as well. By the time I'm actually changing her I am losing it as I ramble off something like "We do not touch poop. Poop is not a toy and we don't want to touch it because then our hands will be very, VERY dirty. You need to put your poop in the potty. No more pooping in your pants. No more. Repeat after me: I promise...I won't...poop in my pants." This ranting continued as I brought her downstairs seeing as how the container of wipes I had just used was for the purpose of cleaning her enough to get her from upstairs, down to the bathroom where I threw her in the shower. After hearing me say for the twentieth time "No more pooping in your pants," Sage interrupted me to ask if she could go in my parents hot tub. She's been asking this a lot lately so what does a mother do when she really wants a certain action from her child? That's right, bribery at its finest my friends. I'm not at all ashamed to use it--as long as it's used correctly. I tell her that of course she can go in the hot tub after she has pooped in the potty. Immediately after getting out of the shower she says "I have to go potty" so she sits down and starts pushing until her face resembles a tomato. She looks at me and concludes "It's not working. I have to try Papa's potty." Right, I'm sure that will make all the difference. We grab Clare and head to my parents bathroom which is also the room that holds the hot tub. The pushing resumes and after a bit she is able to push out the tiniest poop ever. Seriously, squint and you'll see it. Great. I have no choice but to make a huge deal out of it and let her get into the hot tub. I was actually pretty happy because I thought maybe I had stumbled upon the one vice that I could use to throw the power into my court. The next day she wakes up clean and I kindly remind her that there is a dip in the water coming her way when she makes a proper deposit. Later that morning she gets it into her head that she really wants to go in the tub so for 30 minutes she runs her naked butt back and forth between the bathrooms to figure out which toilet is going to be the one that works today. Every five minutes she would run to me (I was feeding Clare her cereal) and exclaim "Mommy, I did it! I did it!" and I would go look with her but what she had done was pee so I would tell her good job and keep working on that poop. Finally after making her victory claim for the sixth time I go look again, expecting to see nothing, and there it was...cue the choir...Papa's toilet once again worked like a charm. Oh, there was no faking my joy that time.

No dip in the hot tub yet today but also, no accidents either. My fingers are tightly crossed...in fact, they're starting to hurt from being crossed for so long. I'm hoping that if any of you see Sage in the next few weeks, you will find a water-logged girl with dry, itchy skin from all of her trips into the hot tub. One can always hope.