Potty Training

Finn and his hat that is not underwear

I've been letting Finn lead the way with potty training, and he's already way ahead of where I would have anticipated he would be.  He asks to go to the bathroom about 75% of the time when he has to poop, and rarely (usually bedtime!) when he has to pee.  He's even told me, "Mommy, I need to poop!" when we've been out, and then pooped in a public toilet.  I didn't do anything to prompt this, it's all been him.  Though, from the time he was old enough to notice, I've shown him his poop in his diaper, and when he was old enough to help, I've had him come with me when I dump his poop in the toilet, and have him help me flush it.  (I have several friends who had children who freaked out the first time they pooped in the toilet and saw their poop, so I wanted to be sure we avoided that!)

Friday morning he woke up with a dry diaper, and had showered with me.  He had naked time after the shower, and as I was picking out my clothes he said, "I have to go potty.  Bye Mommy!" and went to his bathroom.  I followed, but he kicked me out, then came running in the room a few minutes later, "I pee-peed on the potty, Mommy!" I had to go to give the appropriate oohs and ahhs and yays, and discovered a potty full of pee...and pee on the floor, too.  I was running late and short on patience, but really hate to make him feel bad about anything potty related, so I groaned just a little, cleaned up the pee and sang the "Finn pee-peed on the potty!" song.

He got big boy underwear a couple of months ago, but until last week, didn't show any interest in using them for anything more than a hat. Then this past week we've read the Potty book a couple of times and he's asked about wearing underwear.  So yesterday afternoon I put him in his first pair of big boy underwear.  Within an hour he was walking to the bathroom, pulling down his pants, and then peed on the toilet.  Yay!  "Oh, this is going to be easier than I ever expected!" I thought to myself.

This morning I put him in underwear right after we woke up, then puttered around upstairs while he played between his room, my room and the porch off my bedroom.  About 20 minutes later he walked into my room, crying.  "I pee-peed, Mommy!" I took of his wet clothes, cleaned up the floor where he'd peed, and let him run around naked.  After I rinsed out his clothes, I walked out to the porch where he was playing and saw a puddle on the ground.  "Did you pee out here, Finn?"  "Yes, Mommy!  And I poopied, too!" and he proudly pointed to the little mound of poop by the railing. 

So it was back in diapers for our errands and naptime, then this afternoon we had naked time.  I was in the bathroom  and he walked by with a diaper in his hand. "Hi Mommy!" "Finn, what's in that diaper?"  He brought it to me, and showed me the poop in the diaper. He had gotten a clean diaper and pooped in it, rather than coming to the bathroom.  And, as I later discovered, he had peed into another clean diaper and left that one in the living room.

I think he's telling me he's not quite ready to give up diapers.  But he looks so cute in his little underwear!  (No pictures of that, yet!)

My computer is officially damaged...I took it to the Apple Hospital Saturday, and am expecting it back later this week.  I'm using my work computer, which is a pain.  I can't comment on some blogs (that use Discus for comments), it's doing weird things when I try to post, it's really slow, it looks to me like it messed up the picture on this post, and it's driving me crazy with other websites as well. I may not be around much this week, if i can't get this computer working better.