Poopie talk

Dear readers,

I'm sure you are very tired of all this poop and potty training talk. I assure you, so am I. However, all things about poop and related to poop has become my life. Today, I ruined a batch of muffins because I forgot to add the sugar to the batter. It wasn't due to lack of sleep. It was because I was distracted by darling daughter's insistent poopie dance. So I thought I'd wrap up the week with some poopie talk.

I'm still waging a quiet war with darling daughter in over her reluctance to poop on the potty. There is a phrase my mom would often quote to me when I was older: poop or get off the pot. Basically I've used this as my mantra all week. Since last Sunday, we haven't had a successful poop-meet-potty encounter. I have been able to resist the urge in not buying disposable training pants, but it has been hard. No one wants to clean up poop. And toddler poop is quite disgusting.

With the new poop or get off the pot mindset, I've decided to use another arsenal in my toolbox in getting darling daughter to poop: positive peer pressure. I suddenly got the idea after attending a playdate earlier in the week. Darling daughter is enamoured with one particular girl. Loves her. Loves to play with her. So afterwards when darling daughter was singing her praises on the car ride home, I suddenly said, "Did you know that A knows how to poop in the potty?" (A true fact). This piqued darling daughter's interest. I didn't stop there. I continued. "Did you know that C knows how to poop in the potty? Did you know that M knows how to poop in the potty? Did you know that K knows how to poop in the potty?" I mentally went down the list of all the big kids darling daughter has encountered in the last two months and told her that they poop in the potty. Basically my message was, if all the kids are doing it, you can too!

The peer pressure tactic could be working. Several times a day, I take time to engage in some poopie talk with darling daughter. We talk about where it comes from and the fact it is yucky and it needs to go in the potty. We also discuss how big girls wear underwear and big girls use the potty. We talk about how A uses the potty, as well as C, K and M. Daddy uses the potty. Mommy uses the potty. Everyone uses the potty. For good measure, I even told her that Calliou uses the potty, too.

So today when she was doing the insistent potty dance, I brought down the potty into the living room and urged her to use the potty. "No want to. No want to. No want to," was the response I got. I quietly reminded her that A poops in the potty and her mommy gets her a special treat. And if she could do it, she could too. Plus, she'd get a special treat, just like A. It could have been the fact that she couldn't hold it in any longer or that peer pressure is working, but we finally had a successful poop-meets-potty encounter. Thank God! A happy poop-free toddler makes me happy.