Turtle pee-peed in the potty!!

The title tells you everything you need to know. But if you want every gory detail, read on.

About six weeks ago I read a potty training book to figure out what I should be doing to prepare for the daunting task of potty training. It’s not that I thought the girls were ready (they’re only 21 months old), I just thought I needed a really long lead time to get myself ready. I bought two potty chairs and a board book about a little girl getting a new potty. I put the chairs away and spent the last month reading “A Potty for Me” every now and then, and talking about the potty at every opportunity. The girls accompany me to the bathroom, and like to flush the toilet. They point to their correct body parts and say “pee pee” and “poo poo.” They come and tell me when they have “poo poo” in their diaper and essentially lead me to the changing table for a fresh diaper.

We’d gotten to the point where we’d talked potty talk to death, so I decided today was the day to introduce the potty chairs. The girls knew immediately what the chairs were. We let them play with the chairs for awhile in the living room, and then took them to the bathroom. The plan was and continues to be to let them sit on the chairs with or without their diaper once or twice a day until it seems like they’re ready for actual training, which I am assuming is still several months away, if not more.

I had planned for “sitting” time to be a casual and unproductive affair, with no expectation other than to practice sitting. We helped the girls sit and then started singing a couple of little songs, and then all of a sudden we heard the unmistakable sound of pee going into Turtle’s potty! Twin Daddy and I cheered and clapped wildly for our little Turtle, and she was quite pleased with herself. Monkey was not too sure what all the commotion was about, but we praised her for sitting, which is all we’re really trying to do at this point.

I am trying not to get too ahead of myself here, but I have to say I was thrilled and not completely surprised about Turtle’s performance. She always goes off and squats somewhere to go to the bathroom, so it seems like she understands what she is doing and was just waiting for me to get the darn chair out and get on with it. Despite this immediate success, though, I’m still going to take it very, very slow. Diapers are pretty convenient, and I’m in no hurry for our outings to turn into nothing more than multiple potty stops along Anderson Lane. Besides that, once my babies are out of diapers . . . . well, I can’t even go there.