Where There’s a Will…

As I struggled through another day of training my daughter to use the potty, I strained my eyes to see the light at the end of the tunnel.  After all, success couldn’t be that far away.  Hannah Grace did try to make her baby doll use the potty….

Even in the midst of the sea of urine and mounds of feces that have accumulated on my carpet, there are many humorous events that go along with potty training.  Hannah Grace caused me to chuckle as her doll went pee-pee, and I was reminded of another event from six months earlier that kept me laughing for days.  Prior to starting my blog, this post was published on my facebook profile:

From February 24, 2009

I should’ve known from my morning that today was going to be off. My car wouldn’t start, and of course, today was my day to work in the playroom at the gym. Thanks to my husband’s help, I arrived with the kids in tow only 25 minutes late, but apparently the excitement for the day had just started….

The playroom was crazy, and at one point in the day I was holding a cranky baby, ushering four kids out the door to their respective mommies with another worker, while the third staff member was tending to the other 30 kids in the playroom. All of a sudden, my co-worker Stephanie exclaimed, “Jennifer, Caleb’s peeing in a cup!” Of all of the words to follow “Jennifer,” I was not expecting those five.

I had no idea what she was talking about or why Caleb would pull this stunt, but I quicky handed her the baby and ran to the bathroom while a few horrified mothers looked on the scene. Sure enough, Caleb’s pants were down around his ankles, and he had his penis stuffed in a sparkly Cinderella cup from one of the toy dish sets.

Now, let me back up. In Caleb’s defense, the door to the bathroom was locked. We had a lock installed on the outside to keep little kids like Caleb from going in the bathroom and playing in the toilet. Now why Caleb didn’t get one of us to unlock the door…well, if he did that, he wouldn’t have the opportunity to pee in a sparkly cup, would he?

I quickly ushered Caleb in the bathroom, not quite sure if pee was actually in the cup, yet, or if Caleb was just working up the nerve. “You can’t pee in a cup, Caleb! Use the potty,” I frantically tried to reason with him. He was holding that cup with a death grip as he made his way to the stool in front of the potty. I looked down, and the damage had been done. Caleb took the cup, and threw his pee into the potty. I have to give it to the kid–he didn’t spill one drop.

Caleb looked up at me with pride in his eyes. “I poured my pee in the potty. That was funny,” he smiled.

Once again, I stressed that we don’t pee in cups and threw the sparkly Cinderella cup in the trashcan as we headed back to the crowd of kids. As Caleb walked away, I couldn’t help but think he was pretty smart. I mean, he could’ve peed on the floor.

True to form my almost three year-old taught me a lesson: “Where there’s a will, there’s a way!” Or if that moral doesn’t work for you, how about “There’s never a reason to pee in your pants if a cup’s nearby.”