Yes, it is that time. Now I am not expecting anything grand. I know Kanan is a boy and chances are he won’t be fully potty trained until he is three, but I thought I could start now. And so far, it has been quite interesting.

Kanan and I bought the potty at Walmart on Wednesday. Nothing spectacular, just a simple $9.95 potty from Safety First that can sit on the floor, fold into a stool, and also can have the seat removed and inserted into the adult seat on the big potty.

That night, I pulled out  the potty and showed it to Kanan. I told him what it was and asked him to sit on it. He was quite eager to do so. However, instead of approaching the seat from the front side and backing up and then bending down to sit on it like one would expect, my little guy approached the potty from the backside and straddled it like a ride-along toy. I laughed. Then I pulled his legs to the front of the potty and watched. He sat happily, smiling his amused smile and babbling as he always does when content. I talked about pee-pee and poo-poo and how we do it on the potty. He listened and then he got up and moved on to bigger and better things. It was a good start.

About an hour and a half later, right before it was time for Kanan’s bath, I tried again. I pulled it out and he happily sat on it (straddle style again) then I sat on the big potty and told him that we could both go. He sat amused, but was over it in like 2 minutes. So into the bathtub he went. And what happened? He played for 5 minutes and then got this funny expression on his face and then he grunted and looked relieved. I ran toward the tub (I was standing at the sink) and shouted “no, don’t go poo-poo!” It was too late. There floating in the white bubbles amongst orange shovels and blue toy cars was a long brown turd. I pulled Kanan out immediately, took the bowl out of his toddler potty and scooped up the turd and dumped into the toilet. I showed Kanan the turd in the toilet and flushed it. He looked quite perplexed and then reached for the flusher to try it out himself. Then he walked away dripping wet to go play. I wanted to dry him off. But the images of bacteria infesting my bathtub and toys haunted me. I couldn’t do anything but solve that problem first. I quickly poured bleach into the tub and turned on scalding hot water to soak his toys as well. I threw the potty bowl in there too. Then I attempted to find my wet son but didn’t take long because I heard him shouting in the bedroom “eh-eh!” and pointing at the ground. There on my freshly vacuumed carpet was a second turd.

Maybe this potty training thing will be harder than I thought. 😛