>Baby Poo Poo Takes the Ride of His Life
>”Poor Baby Poo Poo,” I said sadly, changing Punky’s extraordinarily stinky diaper and trying not to breathe through my nose. “He just wanted to be with his family in the potty and now he can’t.”
“I just wanted to be with my family,” Punky said in a tiny voice. “Waah, I miss Mommy Poo Poo!”
“And now you’ll never be with your family, Baby Poo Poo,” I said, wiping away a fake tear and staring mournfully at the contents of her diaper. “Now you’ll just have to go in the trashcan and be all by yourself forever.”
“Baby Poo Poo so sad now,” the tiny voice responded. It was a scene heartbreaking enough for any daytime soap, if daytime soaps wrote storylines around baby poo.
You won’t find my method in any potty training handbook, but this is what I was reduced to after trying everything from the Potty Party and the Brazleton no-pressure approach to the Dr. Phil-endorsed Potty Baby, and the “Naked and $75” method. Nothing really worked. But the moment I struck out on my own into uncharted potty training territory and gave poo poo a personality, Punky was on board. Within no time, she was all too happy to make sure Baby Poo Poo got to take a trip down Toilet Lane to be with his family in Sewerville.
“Mommy I did it!” She shouted one afternoon, just a day after a particularly poignant monologue from Baby Poo Poo about how much he missed swimming with his brothers and sisters. “I went poo poo!”
“You mean pee pee?” I asked suspiciously. Punky had had the pee peeing down for months.
“No! Poo poo! I went poo poo and now he can be with his family!” I ran to her toddler toilet and peered inside. And there it was. Poo poo. I started to lunge for my camera, but stopped myself, imagining what people would say when they got to the “First Poo Poo in the Potty” page of Punky’s scrapbook. Instead, I grabbed Punky, wiped her butt and gave her a hearty hug. She was beside herself with delight.
“Take him to be with his family!” she shrieked joyously.
“Okay!” I said, equally delirious at the prospect of buying a pair of platform stilettos with the money we saved on Pull Ups.
“Be careful!” she squealed at Baby Poo Poo as I dumped the contents of her toddler potty into the toilet.
“I’ll be careful!” she responded in her well-practiced Baby Poo Poo voice. “Goodbye, I’m going to see my family now! Goodbye!”
We stood over the toilet and waved at Baby Poo Poo as he made his final exit.
“Yay!” Punky did a little dance. “I did it, Mommy! I’m on the potty train!“
I had to laugh. It took a long, lonnng lonnnng lonnnnnnng time, but we are finally in the home stretch of potty training.
And it won’t be long before I get to start the whole thing over again!
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>Maybe I need to try giving my toddler’s poop a personality. Whatever I’m doing’s not working.
>OH! Go Punky! I am so jealous. We’re good with the pee on the potty, but the poo-poo? He seems to WANT it in his diaper. Ugh. I need to kick it into high gear. Preschool starts in September. Somehow, I have to have him in underpants & wiping his own little fanny by then. Yikes.
>Congrats! Doesn’t it kind of feel like you won a million bucks ? You wouldn’t believe the dances I did when we were on that road.Here’s the funny thing, you can get all the advice in the world and go bonkers trying the “Dr. Phil do it in one day” kind of methods and in the end its what works for your kid and recognizing that they are on their own schedule …not ours as much as we might like them to be.Have fun picking out stilettos!
>this is so funny! it just gave me flashbacks to my childhood when the boy my mom babysat would gather us all around the toilet for the flushing ceremony & we would all “wave bye-bye to the poopy”.
>Anthro-poo-morphism! Marvellous.
>Oh, God bless you…you give me hope. You’ll have to read my blog post today. I’m in pure potty hell right now. We’re not even pee-peeing yet. Sigh…
>pure brilliance, Lindsay. I wish I’d given my kids’ crap an identity!!!
>OMG, I almost peed myself! That is really funny. Maybe you should package that and sell it with a DVD version… 🙂
>I’m keeping this one in the potty playbook.I think the poo in our house is going to have a heavy western accent. Keep the poo true to it’s western heriatage.
>Brilliant strategy. And hilarious for the rest of us, too!
>Horray! Way to be creative! And funny! And the baby is so cute!
>Ugh. Potty training….I used to have tapes that we would listen to in the car (brainwashing) but the down side was that the songs would get stuck in our heads and we would be singing them in the most inopportune times … like in line at the grocery store.
>Yeah, if only I could guilt trip my nearly 3 year old into pooping on the potty…. Good work. That skill will continue to come in handy for many years to come 😉
>We will do nearly anything to get our kids on that potty train, won’t we? If only I could buy a one way ticket. *sigh*
>What inspired you to make baby poo poo a boy? Is it because little boys are smelly and icky and little girls are sugar and spice?
>I can only see that if you could see the size of Punky’s Poo Poos, you would know beyond a shadow of a doubt that they were male.
>Ha! Well, we didn’t go that far, but we did something similar with flushing, having the pee and poo go play with the other pees and poos.
>Oh. My. Word. My three year old son, each time he “does poopy” on the potty waves to the results as they go down the drain and says, “See you later! Have fun with your family!” I love that this isn’t (totally?) abnormal!!
>I will be trying this one with DD. The Naked and $75 sounds good too. Thanks for the very funny advice!
>You rock! Can’t wait to try this when my own baby is ready for Toilet Training!
>So, tell me, is the potty train anything like the Soul Train? Cuz that’s tooo funny and a tad bit disturbing. And potty training has got to be the hardest thing ever. I am so glad we are over and done with that for good now! And I hear boys are way harder than girls, you better start praticing your zen breathing for Bruiser!
>You’re sick, but I think I share in your sickness!! Some would call it Motherhood. It makes us do the darnedest things.
>Yay Punky! My daughter turned 3 today…she will eat a sandwich with a poopy diaper & does not mind one bit. Classy broad. I’m going to try your method…it’s gotta work…if not, at least we’ll have some laughs.
>I’m trying this starting TONIGHT!
>I tried it and guess what? IT WORKED! DD pooped in her potty for the first time. You should write a book about this!
>What a GREAT idea! I’m so trying this… I’m at the end of my tether…