Potty Training Adventures

We have embarked on this messy and strangely sad journey with our older son, Zach. Since Seth is forced by the all-powerful gods at HP to take Christmas to New Year off, we decided this would be a great opportunity to start potty-training Zach. He's 2 1/2, and has been showing signs of interest in shedding diapers. With Seth being home, and me trying to not work too much during that time, it seemed ideal to take the big plunge.

We have a little potty for him, and bought him Big Boy Underwear; Zach got to pick out the designs, and chose Cars, baseball and Thomas (gee, we're all so surprised by that). The first day was pretty tough - we have a total of 10 pairs of underwear, and I think we may have gone through every single one. But gradually, he's getting the hang of it. We’ll remind him to sit on the potty every 45 minutes or so, and he’ll go, and then he’ll jump up and run a victory lap around the house, screaming “I peed in the potty, I peed in the potty!” It is really cute to see how excited he gets about it, and you can just see how proud he is of himself.

Cute anecdotes from the past week: my cousin, Rachel, and 2 of her friends are visiting Colorado, and on New Year’s Eve, they stopped by my parents’ house for dinner and cards. They’re all in their early-mid 20’s and none of them has a kid yet. Zach was not ashamed to do his victory dance, and to proclaim proudly of his accomplishments in the potty-arena during hteir visit…the only time in life people you don’t even know will cheer you on for using the bathroom properly. J They were good sports about it. Yesterday, Seth was making himself some lunch, and thought Zach was around the corner, playing with his trains; the next thing Seth knew, Zach was running around the house without any pants on, doing his victory lap – he had undressed himself and gone potty without anyone helping him. That’s when it hit me – this is truly the first stage of independence.

When babies start walking, they need you a little less, but they still need you to do pretty much everything for them. But once he’s out of diapers, everything changes. He’ll take responsibility for himself for the first time by letting us know when he has to go potty. He can start doing a pre-preschool program at a school, because they won’t take kids until they’re potty-trained. He’ll be with strangers for half the day, playing with other kids and learning from people who aren’t related to him. He can start doing some of the really fun activities offered through the city’s Recreation Department, because they won’t take kids who aren’t potty-trained either. Once he starts doing those things, he’ll be one step closer to kindergarten, where he’ll be learning to read and write, and our whole world will change. He’ll start participating in sports, having friends come over, and doing new things that don’t involve us. He’ll need us less and less, and that is what is really frightening. Suddenly, he’ll be a teenager, then an adult, and we’ll look back at the past 18 years and wonder how it went by so quickly. It makes me want to hold him a little closer when, in those increasingly rare moments, he’ll sit with me, and it scares me. I was looking forward to not having to change his diapers anymore; I was totally unprepared for what emotions and fears would arise as I realized what his being potty-trained means – Zach is growing up!

Our First Blog

Hello everyone! This is our first family blog. My friend, Melissa King, is so awesome about updating her blogspot page and sharing it with everyone; she inspired me to do the same. We have a family website, sethandmelissa.net, which Seth updates as often as he can, but I thought this would be a great (and easy) way to keep people updated on what's going on with our family.

Thanks!
Seth, Melissa, Zach and Alex Pickett