Poop Charts and Terrible Threes

Wyatt poos in the potty. Ahh yeah. He is potty trained. This was, by far, the BIGGEST event at our house this summer. Several months ago Wyatt was displaying all the signs of "toilet training readiness" that I read about in my development books, so I was all excited to give it a go. It was a massive FAIL. He did great for a few days, then started refusing to go in his potty, and then when he would go in his pants, he would throw a huge fit, start crying and screaming and refusing to let me take off his pants to clean up. Fu-un. I don't understand where that came from. I also don't understand why potty training had to be so emotionally-charged. Anyway. That was the end of that. The experience kind of scared me off, and honestly, I am lazy. Changing three diapers a day is a lot easier than constantly asking, "do you have to go potty? do you have to go potty?" and then hanging out in the bathroom for ten minutes 25 times a day while he does three drops of pee and then spends the next ten minutes trying to get his pants back on, flush the toilet and wash his hands. Meanwhile, Micah is crawling all over the bathroom, playing in the trash can, picking up hairs off the floor and trying to stick his hands in the toilet and then in his mouth. You can see why I didn't want to mess with the status quo. I was happy to have him in diapers until he is ten. But then...preschool. Wyatt and (mostly) I have been so excited for him to start preschool. I knew we had until September to get the kid out of diapers. So we started slow, going in the potty before bath, when changing clothes, and then one day, just bit the bullet and put him in underwear. And...it was easy. All the sudden he was doing all his pees and poos in the potty. He did pull-ups at night for about a month or two, but after a few weeks was waking up dry, so we don't do that anymore. He has had a few accidents (including one truly horrific experience at Target...I don't even want to talk about it), but mostly it has been great. I'm relieved it is over.

Wyatt loved his sticker charts. Micah loved them too. Wyatt would put the stickers on, and then every chance he got, Micah would pull them off. Survival of the fittest stickers. It saved me from having to make 47 new charts.

As you can see, Wyatt prefers to wear underwear backwards. It drives me nuts on his behalf, but he chooses to be able to see Mater and Lightning McQueen and Thomas when he looks down, rather than be comfortable. Why don't underwear makers put the stupid characters on the front of the underpants, rather than on the backside? It doesn't make any sense. The only real problem it causes is that Wyatt has a hard time getting his underpants back on after potty time. I keep telling him its because they are on the WRONG WAY but whatever. Maybe he is just trying to accentuate his butt. It is so cute, no?

Part Two

Another big change occurred in our house this summer. Wyatt turned into a giant booger. Truly. I was feeling so happy and relieved and maybe a little smug that MY child never went through the "terrible twos." Oopsie. You know what they say about pride going before the fall and all that. Basically what happened is this. About five minutes after Wyatt turned three he morphed into the devil. I don't know what happened. As a two year old he was great. A little spacey, but great. He turns three, all of the sudden, TANTRUMS! FITS! SCREAMING! DEFIANCE! FLOPPING! HITTING! SHOVING! THROWING THINGS AT INNOCENT BYSTANDERS! Whew. It isn't pretty. After asking everyone I know, and many people I don't, I have come to the conclusion that this is "normal." Pretty much everyone said the same thing. Their two year olds were great, and then a dramatic change at three. Things are getting better, but he has learned how to throw a proper fit, and isn't afraid to do so at the drop of a hat. So beware everybody. The rest of the family has learned to ignore it, which helps, but we are all quite eager for this fun phase to phase out. One positive, he makes Micah's dramatics seem like a sunny day at the park with floating bubbles and chocolate covered strawberries.

I just hope he returns to normal before baby sister comes. Is that way too much to ask? Pretty please?