Let's Talk About Poop

Evan's poop is finally making it into the potty.  Yaaaaaaaay!  The poor kid has been terrified to poop on the potty for the past couple of months, but for whatever reason he just decided to start doing it last week.  I can't tell you how happy I am about this accomplishment.  There's nothing worse than trying to hand wash poop covered underwear - I eventually just started throwing them away.  Call me wasteful or what you will, but having poop between my fingers not once...not twice...but more than I care to count is reason enough in my book.

We went back and forth on whether or not we should put him back in Pull Ups, but we were afraid he would digress in his training.  He transitioned so easily to peeing in the potty and was so proud to be wearing underwear that we didn't want to compromise that.  We did try the whole do you need to be back in a diaper tactic, but it didn't work.  He was literally just frightened of pooping.  So we waited...

This waiting period of two months was ridiculous and frustrating.  Evan knew he shouldn't be pooping in his pants, so he began holding his poop for as long as he could - usually two days - until he just couldn't hold it anymore.  At that point he would dance around the house holding his butt, whining and crying that his butt hurt.  We tried to encourage him to sit on the potty.  We would even try to convince him that pooping would feel good and his butt would feel better.  Nothing ever worked.  He would get angry and upset and then shut down.

I'm not really sure what flipped the switch for him.  At one point last week I told him that Lightening McQueen and Mater were upset that he kept pooping on them.  Evan seemed concerned and asked me several times if they were mad at him.  Maybe this helped?

I invited Mimi over for dinner last week and while we were eating (lovely dinner talk) I was explaining to her how frustrated I was the night before trying to get Evan to poop on the potty.  I told her that I had to wash/throw way three pairs of underwear - all in about 10 minutes.  Evan was listening to this conversation and when I was finished he looked at me and said, "Mama, I want to go poop on the potty.  Will you help me?"  At first I was thinking this is not the time to be messing around with me boy.   But he seemed sincere so I helped him on the potty and awaaaay he went!  He cheered when he was through and we told him how proud we were - and the rest is history.

Evan is officially potty trained, my friends.