Toilet humor

This will, by far, be the grossest thing you've read all day. Maybe all week. So, please excuse me for my crassness, but I'm slightly sleep deprived, stressed at work, and facing what seems to be an insurmountable obstacle of a stubborn boy in the midst of potty training.

Everything started out really well. We took accidents in stride, and praised using the potty like mad. I even brushed off the ol' "pee-pee in the potty!" song (think samba line beat). We were consistently turning out 0-1 accident days. He spent a test day in preschool and loved it. Then something happened. Well...it might have been a confluence of events. For one, he's never really *liked* going poopoo on the potty. Other than the one time we forgot about him and he did it on his own, it's been kind of a "have to" type of thing rather than a "want to."

For the past few weeks, he's been "holding it." Every few days, he'll blow - either in the potty or in a diaper or *shudder* in his underpants. Last night was one of those "day 3" situations. There were skidmarks in his hulk-smash underpants. It was time. He sat on the froggy potty making his poo-face for a while. And then he hopped up and said no. I briefly thought about letting him go, but those skid marks! No way. He needed to sit. He chose to squat on the floor while horrible gases escaped. Scooter and I talked him back down onto the potty. He hopped up and I gave him the option of going on the "water potty." Utter, bone-chilling fear crossed his face and he sat back down. He hopped up and said his belly hurt. He leaned across my lap while more noxious fumes seeped out. Then he panicked. It was coming! I sat him back on the potty, and he filled it, softserve ice cream style until he couldn't sit on froggy anymore. The whole potty was filled and the poo was swirled up like some sort of grotesque DQ cone. And my son was terrified, screaming, so sad. We dumped, flushed, cleaned, wiped and sanitized and then put new big boy underpants on.

Poor Bubba was traumatized. Going on the potty is scary. And so many people were expecting so much out of him. I picked him up and hugged him while talking soothingly in his ear about how proud we were of him for giving the froggy his poo poo. Bubba layed his head on my shoulder and started to relax, his breath catching a few times as he calmed down. He went a little limp, fully relaxing. Only then did I realize that he hadn't gone pee pee in the potty in a couple of hours. And I only realized it because my shirt suddenly got very warm and wet. Yeah...he peed on me.

I could either look at it as paybacks for my making him sit on that potty for 45 minutes. OR I could look at it as he feels like he can really, truly relax with his mom. I chose the latter, and told Ben as much. Ben replied with, "Well, yeah, but nobody should relax THAT much." I guess he's right. But I'll take it for now.