More on Potty Training

This potty training thing is no joke.

I had heard from multiple trusted sources that I shouldn't potty train until I knew Baby was ready. So I waited and waited for a Sign that Baby was ready. I'm not sure what sign I was waiting for, specifically. Maybe something like, I don't know, Baby climbing on the toilet and using it?

Then, after Baby turned three and he became the only child in my acquaintance who was not potty trained, I started tentatively asking him, "so, Baby, do you want to try the big-boy toilet today?"

"No. No fanks," was his reply, always.

Baby's not really much sold on the big-boy thing. It's more effective to replace "big-boy" with "rocket." Turns out, Baby was slightly more interested in trying the rocket toilet than the big-boy toilet (or the rocket underwear, rocket toilet paper, whatever).

I'm really only on the potty training wagon now because of peer pressure. Diapers are convenient. Stick Baby in a diaper under his snow suit, and send him out to play for hours. Do you know how hard it is to convince a three-year-old to strip out of his snow pants to use the toilet? Diapers are a pain to carry around, but guess what, so is a plastic bag, a dry pair of pants, and a map of the city with post-its on the public restrooms.

But I am determined for whatever reason to get this child going on the toilet like the rest of America. We are potty training with a vengeance. After doing a bunch of reading on the subject (sheesh, there's a whole cottage industry built around potty training), I've decided to employ a number of methods at the same time:

threats ("if you wet your pants, you lose them for the rest of the day"),
bribes (movies, candy, popcorn, multivitamins, toys, books, what haven't I offered this child?),
songs (a certain song about fish worked for a while but now we've moved on to "The Little Drummer Boy" and "Five Little Ducks."),
dances (erm, don't ask about this one), and
Pavlovian psychology (at some point, I should un-train Baby from peeing every time someone says, "ready, set, blastoff,").

And I'm probably doing something horrible to Baby's psycho-social-whatever with this mish-mash of mish-mash. But now that Baby is very, very old, I think he can handle it.