I Guess He's on "Boy Time"

Before I explain, I have to admit that I got confused by the instructions (no big surprise there, huh?). You see, I was tagged by Ed at Zoe's Dad for a really fun meme. Only, I couldn't figure out what the sixth file in a person's "documents" had to do with the sixth picture. I didn't have a sixth picture in my "documents" file, and I couldn't figure out what to do with the sixth document either. Sooooo...instead, I went to my "pictures" file and chose the sixth one. This happens to be a pic that I considered blogging about a couple months ago, but decided against it. That was apparently a fortunate choice at the time, or else this post would have been redundant. First of all, here are the rules of the meme:

1. Go to your documents
2. Go to your 6th file.
3. Go to your 6th picture.
4. Blog about it.
5. Tag 6 friends to do the same.

Here we go....

I did not realize how easy my Dear Daughter made potty training seem until my Dear Son reached his own right of passage. Dear Daughter sat on the potty relatively patiently by 18 months of age. She was fully potty trained in a single day by 20 months and never had an accident. Really.

As most things go, I did not fully realize the precociousness of my daughter until my son entered the picture. Since I had not spent much (ANY) time around babies or small children until my own came along, I did not know what was "normal." Apparently whatever "normal" is, it is NOT my daughter. She spoke in clear, full paragraphs well before two years of age. She knew her entire alphabet and counted to 20 by twenty months of age. She also knew all her colors (including brown, peach, and other more "exotic" shades), and shapes (including PENTAGON and OCTAGON) at this age and could sing several nursery songs correctly from beginning to end --including Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, the ABC song, and Jesus Loves Me. Really. I am not exaggerating. I have many witnesses who will vouch for my honesty in this, and lots of video footage to back me up as well.

Dear Son is not dumb by any means, he's just not precocious like his big sister. He knew all his colors (especially BROWN, which he originally defined as "turd") by two years of age as well as all his shapes (the standard fare here...I'm pretty confident he does not know pentagon and hexagon), and somewhere around two and a half we was able to count to 10 correctly. At just-turned-three years of age, he can sing the "ABC" song and get it mostly correct. He's no dummy...but as far as I can tell, he's much more in line with typical developmental abilities.

This, I dare say, is also apparently true about the potty training thing. Around two years of age we began the training thing.... I figured we were late to the show as his sister had this mastered well before two years of age. We gave up relatively shortly with Son, realizing he just wasn't ready yet. I started reading books about how to train boys and asking LOTS of people how they trained their boys. Nearly EVERYONE told me that their boys were not trained until three and half years. "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" was my response. When the first mom told me this, I just thought her child was an imbecile. When the second mom told me this, I figured she didn't pay enough attention to her child or get involved enough in his little life to train him properly. When the third mom told me this, I began to get very worried.

At two and a half we tried training Dear Son again. He would not always agree to sit on the potty, but after several attempts one day with no luck, Daddy arrived home from work. I suggested Daddy put Son on the potty, and wouldn't you know it. Not ten minutes after Daddy walked in the door from work, there was a turd in the potty chair. Dear Son has been a die-hard Daddy's boy for the past year and a half, so it made sense that Daddy got the turd and not me.

SIX MONTHS LATER we are STILL trying to wrap up this potty training thing with him! We are at the stage now where Son will pee in his Peter Potty training urinal every time we ask him or require him, but he has only ever ASKED to go about twice. His code is usually, "My ding dong hurts." What can I say? Yes, I am responsible for teaching him to call his boyhood a "ding dong," but I didn't necessarily MEAN to. I called it that once in some conversation we were having regarding his parts, and it apparently stuck. In that split second, I just couldn't bring myself to say the "p" word to my child. I have no idea why, but it just felt wrong (not that "ding dong" feels quite right either). But I digress....

Son got into a rut. While he would pee in the potty and frequently stay dry in between, we could not seem to get him to sit through the symphony long enough to complete the second "movement." Going into Halloween we started to get all these junk mailings with costumes and Halloween paraphernalia in them. The kids loved to study them. Son loves to play dress up and has an infatuation with costumes. So I stashed a few magazines in the bathroom and bribed him with these when I wanted him to sit long enough on the potty. Sometimes it worked. Other times Dear Husband and I simply grew weary of sitting in the bathroom for long periods of time analyzing Halloween costumes while waiting for the elusive turd to finally show up to the party (it rarely did).

The picture? Don't blame me, it was the sixth one. And anyway...doesn't every doting parent snap at least one pic of their potty-training child on the potty?

Who's up on my tag list?
1. M&M at Maternal Mirth
2. CaraBee at Land of Bean
3. Serena at Zip 'n' Tizzy
4. Riahli at My Life with Boys
5. Nyssa's Mommy at Julie, Cameron, and Nyssa's World
6. Whoever reads this and would like to play along (insert your name here)