Potty Training: Is it time to get serious?

Roper — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 17:34:00 GMT

Whenever someone asks if we've started potty training the girls, I'm not quite sure what to say. In a way, yes, I guess we have. We try to get them to sit on the potty before bedtime and naptime, which they're usually amenable to, as long as they've got a couple of books to read. Every once in a while, they actually produce something, and they seem proud of themselves. But they seem just as happy to go in the diapers. Elsa does ask to sit on the potty now and then, but more often than not, it's a stalling technique -- she doesn't want to go to sleep or go upstairs and get ready for bed. Still, i's hard to say "no, you don't need to sit on the potty right now." Because every once in a while, she actually does go. She's the girl who cried potty.

During the day, however, when they're happily engaged in playing, the girls have no interest in potty breaks. They like to announce when they're making (or about to make?) a pee-pee or poo-poo, but when I ask or suggest sitting on the potty, they resist. And I'm thinking it's probably not a good idea (not to mention physically impossible) to *force* them, screaming and crying, to sit on the pot.

But I feel like they're getting closer to more "advanced" toilet training. They're starting to learn how to push down and pull up their pants. And God knows, they're obsessed with talking about pee and poop. Elsa's twin baby doll, who she's never really had a name for (she's called her Elsa, Cora -- same as Clio's, and [insert nonsense syllables here]) has recently been christened "Peep." I'm pretty sure this is a reference to pee, as opposed to the Easter-time marshmallow treat. And get this -- Clio has now decided to change the name of her twin baby doll from Cora to "Poop." Yes, folks, that's right. Elsa and Clio have beautiful, silky-haired, American Girl bitty baby twin dolls named Peep and Poop. And there's absolutely nothing I can do about it.

So my question now is, should we be attempting to implement more regular and frequent "potty time" for the girls at this point? Or just continue to let things take their natural course?

I have to admit, that part of why we've been so relaxed about the whole toilet training is sheer laziness. Toilet training with twins presents some definite logistical challenges. If you pop one kid on the potty (I guess I'm saying potty again) you still need to worry about what the other one is up to. And, of course, that other one will inevitably take this unsupervised opportunity to draw on the coffee table or climb up onto a chair and start pulling knives out of the silverware drawer or trip and bump her head on something and start yowling.

The other option is to put twin #2 on the potty at the same time, if she's willing. But inevitably, while you are helping one kid get out of their diaper, the other one will get up off the potty and start running bare-ass naked around the house. And by the time you get her and bring her back -- and hopefully, she hasn't peed on the floor in the meantime -- the other one is up, and waddling around with her pants around her ankles. Like so many things with twins, it's rather like herding cats. Loud, silly, whiny, un-housebroken, disaster-prone, bare-assed cats. (Well, I suppose all cats are bare-assed.)

I know some people suggest letting your kids run around without diapers for a while and just putting them on the potty the second the need for it becomes obvious, but again, I think this would be really tricky with twins. While you're rushing one to the potty, the other one might be soaking your couch. Not cool.

Can I just hire someone to do this for us? Is there, like, Potty Training 911 for twins? The Potty Whisperer? Anything?

My stinky winky daughters

Roper — Sun, 31 May 2009 20:53:00 GMT

I thought that the whole phase of finding it funny to say things like "stinky poo poo" and "Pee-yew, stinky winky" and so on, came later. Like, at three or four or later. When the sense of taboo around these kinds of things was a little more developed. But apparently, two-and-a-half is not too young for kids to have a sense of the silly stinkies.

As usual, of course, we are partly to blame, for asking such stupid things as "who made a stinky poo poo?" And their regualr babysitter is apparently a big "Pee-yew"er, because sometimes when I change the girls' diapers or take their socks off they'll say "Pee-yew!" followed by a giggly "Adriana say that!" I suspect she is the one who put "stinky winky" into their vocabularies as well, because I don't recall either Alastair or I ever saying it. But this morning, the girls were drawing all manner of stinky-winky animals: a stinky winky penguin, a stinky winky whale, a stinky winky sheep. Our friend the stinky stinky bat was back, too.

But really, the stinky winky poo poo stuff is only one part of a recent language explosion that seems to have taken place. In the last week or two the girls' verbal skills have taken another quantum leap, and all of a sudden -- wow. They're yakking up a storm. Talking in full sentences and conjugating verbs like little madwomen. Starting to really get the concepts of past and future tense, even if they don't quite yet have a solid concept of time. Building their vocabularies daily. The things that come out of their mouths are constantly surprising me. (A recent favorite: after the girls got up from a nap, I was commenting on the girls' hair being a mess. Elsa held her hair out to the sides and said "My hair is WILD!!")

I'm feeling quite jealous right now of parents I know who are bringing their kids up bi- or tri-lingually, because it's so clear that this is the optimal time for kids to soak up a foreign language. We obviously can't do the full language immersion thing with our girls -- well, I suppose I could start speaking only my intermediate-level Spanish or French to them, but it would severely limit what I could actually say. I have no idea, for example, how to say "stinky stinky bat" in Spanish. In French, I think I could manage "Chauve-souris tres, tres malodorant," but it just doesn't have the same, peurile ring to it, now does it?

But I'm thinking of getting some Spanish language music CDs and maybe some DVDs. (Any good recommendations? Besides the Muzzy program, which is, like, a million dollars?) And when they girls are a little older, there are some Spanish language playgroups and music classes around here that they could do. I'm also going to keep on encouraging their sitter to do some Spanish with them -- giving her some Spanish books and games to work with would probably be helpful. And yes, yes, French would be nice too, of course, as would countless other languages, but I'm sticking with what's most practical for now. So, pipe down, all you Francophiles out there. (That includes you, Grandma, rolling in your grave because you think French is the "international language," and because, let's face it, you were kind of a bigot.)

In the meantime, we will continue to work on expanding our lexicon of English words for bodily functions, odors and excretions. Poop-o-rific!

The stinky winky sisters! (featuring my recent hatchet job of Clio's bangs and Elsa's WILD hair)

Baby Squared : potty mouth

Potty Training: Is it time to get serious?

My stinky winky daughters