I want my potty!

Finally! I can write a potty post. I miss potty posts. Actually, I just searched the blog for “potty” and it seems I didn’t really write many potty posts when RoRo was little. I know I read lots. I know there were many, many blog posts about poo that made me cry with laughter or challenge my pelvic floor. So perhaps that’s why I didn’t write any, as everyone else had done it so well.

But, anyway… We have hit that time again, with LaLa this time. (And boy won’t she thank me for putting that picture on the internet when she’s older? No need to bring out old photo albums when she brings someone home to meet us – we’ll just stick a slideshow of pictures from the blog up for the love interest to admire.)

We thought she was going to go for it a good few months ago, as she was showing a huge interest and doing lots of poos (though not really any wees), but then she completely lost interest and I did the thing where I worry that I’d cocked up somehow and perhaps should have been reminding her more. Then I thought about it a bit and reminded myself that children are ready when they’re ready – you can’t force them to be ready early (because it’s a physical thing when the nerves have grown correctly – or something of that sort).

And, lo and behold, over the last week and a half, LaLa has been showing a big interest in the potty and using it a lot. She’s still wearing pull-ups and she takes her nappy off and does a wee and then puts it back on again. At first, she was always getting us to wipe her bum, which was definitely a good thing because, now, she’s leaving potties full of wee strewn around the house (OK, we only actually have two potties, so that might not be the best description) and has attempted to empty them into the loo herself a couple of times, even (not the best idea ever, though the sentiment is good, of course). Thankfully, we have not had any poo incidents as yet – she has always called us to deal with those.

It seems, for the most part, that she’s just excited about the whole thing and just decides to sit on the potty and see if anything will come out, rather than recognising that she needs a wee, though she does mostly seem to be recognising that she needs a poo. I think her wee recognition is improving too, though she still often has quite a heavy nappy, so she’s definitely not catching them all. She gets stickers at nursery school and they definitely do a lot of reminding, rather than her asking to go on the potty.

I’m currently predicting that she will be in knickers by the time Grandma and Grandpa come to visit in mid June. Hopefully my blogging about it won’t completely jinx it now.

I feel very excited about the whole process, but can’t really remember if I felt the same last time round. I think the most exciting thing will be getting rid of nappies (or at least just needing one a night for a while). I have had constant guilt over the last five and a half years about not using reusable nappies, a guilt which is strengthened when I read blog posts about people who do use reusables or infographics about how long items stay in landfill before degrading (disposable nappies stay there for thousands of years – ouch). So it will be nice to put that particular environmentally unfriendly parenting choice behind me. And it will save money, too. Which is always nice. And we won’t have to have nappies in the front pockets of our backpacks all the time (though I suppose we will need changes of clothes for a while!).

So… Am I the only one to get excited about their child starting to use potties and loos? Do you yearn to be able to write about this delightful topic? Would you like me to take some more potty pictures? Or shall I concentrate on recipes and book reviews for a while again?