Potty Training Sucks and Rocks At the Same Time

The twins are about to be three. I will be completely honest here and say . . . I baby the crap out of them. I can admit it. I know it's wrong, but I just keep doing it, like how I know it's wrong to eat a whole box of Swiss Rolls in a day but I do it anyway because it feels good. I have problems.

After a week of changing three kids in diapers, one of which eats like a grown man and has man sized poops, I decided this just cannot go on!

I started potty training. We have dabbled in it for months but after a couple nasty poops on the floor or in clothes we go straight back to diapers. This is how it went for a week. I wanted some advice and a lot of people said to just let it go until things get more under control in my house. Obviously I am not sleeping all night and we are adjusting to me being on maternity leave and it's a little exhausting. Never mind, it's a TON exhausting. I took it as a relief and eased up.

But then after a day of changing a bunch of diapers and realizing that my kids know what they are doing because when my daughter wants a chocolate out of the treat jar she magically takes off her diaper and goes potty in the potty I know they are ready and just playing me because they know I will baby them. Weird how that happens.

So I decided . . .f$%^ this. I'm the mom. This twins ARE getting potty trained. Period. I know I won't get any naps in the day and I know I will be cleaning up feces off of random areas of my home but I am going to do this.

We started out naked and going to the potty every 15 minutes. That worked okay. We did a variety of things that didn't work at all for about a week. Every afternoon they ended up in diapers. The next week Peanut woke up and took off her own diaper and went pee in the potty. I gave her a ton of attention and a gummy worm. Osh wanted in on that action so he did the same. I refused to let them in their diapers for any reason. We did not leave the house. We were all about the potty.

By the end of the week, the twins were pretty much day trained! They each have about one accident a day and there is no consistency, it's sometimes poop and sometime's pee but for the rest of the day it is all undies and body fluids in the toilet. It's still tough and I have to be on them all day to go to the potty, although they also tell me when they have to go. They started getting a treat each time they went potty and now we are phasing that out and they just get lots of attention and an occasional treat and hopefully soon going potty in the potty will just be business as usual. They are resisting that a lot and want a treat every time to them so I do what any great parent would do and lie and tell them we don't have any.

They also can't go to the potty in public. They have accidents every time we leave. We have had one outing where Peanut didn't have an accident but Osh had two and one outing that was very brief that Peanut had an accident but Osh didn't. Poop accidents are the nastiest. They do the best when naked for some reason too, once we put on undies they are way more likely to have accidents.

Moral of the story: Potty training is gross. It's tedious. It's a lot of work and I'm lazy, therefore it sucks. But now I only change one pair of diapers a day from them in the morning (we aren't doing night training yet) and then Butterball's diapers. No more man turds in a diaper. No more buying several packs of diapers at Target for a small fortune. No more wiping a row of butts every few hours. And that my friends, totally rocks.

They sometimes fight over the big potty. I was a little tired of it the other day and told them I will be in the bathroom in ten seconds and if it wasn't worked out they were going to be in trouble. The above photo is what they worked out.

One downside of potty training is that they are very aware of the bathroom and all the glorious activities to be found in it. Like playing in the sink. Or stuffing all kinds of items in the toilet. I have been elbow deep in toilet water twice in the last week. It's not cool.