(Mis)adventures in potty training (and some random running)

ORN: 40 minutes of hills, so 1.5 to 7.8 degrees on the dreadmill, at 6.8 mph or faster, giving me a total of about 4.65 miles. Also, 10 minutes of rowing afterwards.

I'm not going to talk much about the running today - I did what I wanted to do (namely, hills), and though it wasn't easy, I wouldn't classify it as a "hard" workout either. In the next couple of weeks, I'll step up the speed, difficulty, or time of the workout, but today was mainly just to see how the knees and legs worked, after so long away from a dedicated hill (or, even better, trail!) workout. The answer is: not bad. Not bad at all.

No, today's big news (such as I ever have) concerns the misadventures of potty training. See, Kevin is now into that magical stage, where we hope to finally end all of the diaper changes in exchange for the occasional accident, which will necessitate cleaning the floor, changing his clothes, and buying stock in a disinfectant manufacturer in order to try and cash in on the effort.

He's also hitting that not-so-magical stage, where he can climb out of his crib, and get into all sorts of trouble in the night. In order to preserve our peace of mind, and, in order to have a decent bribe for sitting on the potty for hours at a time, we have made a little chart. Each time he sits on the potty (for a reasonable period; no "I'm on, I'm off, where's my sticker" for him), he gets to put a sticker on the chart. When he has enough stickers, he gets his new big boy bed.

These stickers, in conjunction with a DVD about construction trucks (featuring Hard-Hat Harry, the Construction Genie) have gotten us some success - we praise every little trickle that actually makes it into the potty, and keep telling him that he is doing a good job sitting there. Unfortunately, I had gotten a little complacent about the whole thing. (You see where this is going, right?)

Tonight, I was busy making dinner and he was sitting on the potty. Now, normally I would have had lots of time - he had just gotten up from his nap, and I had just given him some water, so I figured I had at least 10 minutes or so before it ran through his little bladder. Nope - I leave the kitchen to go check on him, and he has produced not a little dribble, but one of his most impressive efforts to date. And, being the helpful little boy that he is, he is (as he tells me) "Help daddy flush peepee potty", or, translated more thoroughly as follows:

"Dad, you weren't here, so I decided to upend the little container full of urine into this non-waterproof potty seat. Furthermore, I wasn't too precise when I tipped it, which is why my socks are wet. And it's probably a good thing that the toys I was playing with while watching Hard-Hat Harry are waterproof."

Okay, so I got him cleaned up, the toys washed and drying, the mess cleaned up, and a diaper on him (though not in that order - the diaper was first, as he was still walking around with a loaded gun, so to speak.) While I am cleaning up the toys, he comes waltzing back up to me, naked as a jaybird, having removed his diaper and wondering when he can sit on the potty again.

It's a lot funnier now than it was six hours ago. I try to keep a sense of humor about these things - he honestly wanted to help, and thought that he was doing so. And he is trying, but he's only two, and so he is going to make these kinds of mistakes (and messes) again in the future. Just one of the less glamorous facets of parenthood - but I wouldn't trade it away for anything.