Yeah so we’ve been potty training Frank.  Fear not, this post contains no pictures.  Tracy wouldn’t let me.

As I said we have been potty training Frank, and it’s not really been going well.  He seemed to be completely unaware of when he had to go.  He liked sitting on his little Lightning McQueen potty, just not when he was peeing.  He saved that for his pants.

He’d walk in the room like John Wayne after a 600 mile horse ride and say, “Daddy I’m soaking wet.”  Well Frank that will happen from time to time when you pee nine gallons of apple juice down your leg. Actually he looked more like the old plastic cowboy figures who were molded to sit on a horse.

So it was with complete surprise that I looked on my son the other day when he showed up in the kitchen, naked from the waist down, arms strangely out to his sides like he was about to draw down on me, and exclaimed, “Daddy, I made a dirt!  I need some wipes!” The “I need some wipes” shout came with the urgency of a crook trying to clean his prints from a crime scene.

With trepidation I walked around the corner into the bathroom.  No need to look, the odor answered all my questions several steps before I got to the door.  Well, all but 1 question. Did he hit the target?  For that info I had to go in.  Fortunately, I guess, he had in fact hit the mark. He might not have been the lead plane of a flight of B-17s over Berlin, but there was nothing on the floor, so there was a small silver lining. However, his Lightning McQueen potty might not ever recover.

What was so confusing was the fact that he had been wearing a diaper.

I had to ask, “Frank where is your diaper?”  It’s in the trash, he says.  Again, thankfully he got it off before the action started.  So it was basically a dry diaper in the trash.  Ok no harm there.  Now the big question.  “Frank, why did you take your diaper off?”

“Dirt was coming out!”  “I NEED SOME WIPES!”  That in fact, was yelled at me with the attitude of, Dude are you mental, I just pooped, can we do the interrogation after I get cleaned up and put on some pants.

So yeah I was trying to reason with my half naked 3 year old, who had just dropped a #2 in the potty and was demanding wipes so he could clean himself.  At that moment, he was the more mature person.

This was the turning point.  For whatever reason after days of peeing the hell out of his pants, he decided this moment was the time to start using the potty.  He’s been perfect with the potty since.  Got the whole routine down to include washing his hands.

The only hangup now is when he’s sleeping.  He wears a diaper for naps and bedtime, but if he “makes a dirt”, no matter what time, he gets up, takes off his pants and the diaper, puts the dirty diaper in the trash and yells for some wipes.

It would be hilarious if it wasn’t in the wee hours of the morning.

Wee hours, see what I did there?