Having a child that is potty training means you have lots of weird conversations. Never in my life have I asked someone so often about their bathroom habits. It's just nuts! And my soon-to-be-three-year-old son is pretty stubborn and often refuses to sit on the potty to even try to go, which means I've had to do some creative bargaining in public places (and I've also done a ton of clothing
changes in public bathrooms everywhere. It's hard to bend over and change wet clothes in a small space when you are 30 weeks pregnant, by the way).

I've convinced him to try to pee by offering bribes, making trades (you can't do X until you've tried to go potty), and by putting odd things in the potty for him to pee on. I've also carted our little potty ("The Royal Potty" - it plays music when they pee, I highly recommend it) to friends' houses and had duel peeing sessions (if you go, I'll go too).

I've answered endless personal questions about what I'm about to do/have just done in the potty myself. I've been slapped on the butt while hovering over a dirty public toilet. I've learned that little boys must make an effort to point their penises down into the potty or risk a clean up of astounding proportions. I've told my son to avoid touching sanitary napkin trash cans and plungers so many times that he automatically points to them and says, "I've told you again and again and again..."

Yesterday I changed two pairs of wet padded underpants, cleaned up pee that missed the potty, cleaned up poop that was shaken onto the floor out of the underpants that caught it, and then got barfed on (that one was unrelated to the potty training, but it topped off a day full of smelly bodily fluids).

I've learned that plastic pants that cover padded underpants are the greatest.thing.ever, even if they make those underpants pretty sweaty. I've also learned that my son figured out very quickly that expressing a need to go potty gets a reaction from parents and grandparents. He's fond of using it as a bedtime delay tactic. Unfortunately for him, sometimes he really has to pee and it does it right away when he sits on the potty, which means he doesn't get much of a delay at all. Of course, then he claims that "poo-poo is going to come out," so that we have to wait around for that.

I've also heard some creative things from him, including that when he was constipated, "My bottom is locked!" He also went running through a restaurant after a trip to the potty, announcing, "Nothing is coming out of my bottom!" Unfortunately, that statement was immediately followed by a pee pee accident.

Long live plastic pants.

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