This is our Elmo potty. Note the pretend “flusher.” When pushed, Elmo’s creepy laughter echoes throughout our house. The back of the potty shows Elmo wearing a scuba mask and swimming underwater. I have a problem with this, as I feel like it is implying that Elmo is swimming in the potty which is gross, and in my opinion, sending the wrong message about how potties are to be used.

We haven’t been great about consistency with “potty training”, if you can even call it that. We put Reese on it every now and then, but up until this week she had probably only gone in it once. The rest of the time she just sat on it and read books or “magazines.”

She has also learned to use it against us. She quickly realized that whenever she would say “pee pee” or “poo poo” we would stop whatever she was doing, take off her diaper, rush her to the Elmo potty, and read books to her. She used this to escape bath times, bedtimes, naps, and basically anything she deemed unfavorable.

The past two nights Reese has done a poop (TMI?) in the potty before bath time. Each time she does it, we make a big deal. There is applause and a song and dance that includes roof raising on my part and circular running with arms raised on her part. The song goes “Reesie went in the pot-tee, Reesie went in the pot-tee. Yea Reesie yea!” You can tell she is extremely proud and it might be the best part of the day for all of us.

Reese particularly enjoys the cheering part. Sometimes, she will sit down, make a few grunting noises, then stand up, point to the empty potty and say, “Yay! You did a poop!” (there is some confusion surrounding pronouns) and clap for herself. Sometimes she’ll add a, “Good job!” in there as an extra pat on the back to herself. When she fakes it like this, Andrew and I always remind her, “No Reese, you didn’t do a poop, but thanks for trying.” The other day she sat down, pretended to go, jumped up, started clapping and pointing at the empty potty and said, “Yay, you did a poop! No you didn’t.” then sat back down.  We had witnessed an internal battle and truth had prevailed.

So this is our method. There is no real method. We sit her on the potty at the same time each night and if she goes, we have a party. If not, that’s ok too. If she pretends to go, we just remind her of the cold, hard truth,  “No you didn’t.”

PS Please disregard the giant bruise on Reese’s head. She fell the other night in the kitchen and knocked her head on the floor. She took it like a champ but it was a nasty one.