If there was ever a particular parenting milestone that I wasn’t really looking forward to, I’d guess that I would be joined by millions of parents out in the world who also dread the inevitable time for potty training. Obviously, the end goal is of the greatest achievement, being the liberation of needing to change diapers, but the vast majority of parents probably don’t have a second baby already in tow that will need to remain in diapers for the better part of the next 15-16 months regardless.
All the same, the time has come in which mythical wife and I have embarked on the beginning stages of potty training #1. We’re taking the approach of trying to train in stages, with the first stage being cordoning our child off into a segment of the house where we can monitor and observe behavior and seek out patterns, as well as have a safe surface that will get peed on, a whole lot.
Two days in and my daughter has accomplished to get some urine into the bowl of her training potty, as well as drop a few turds into the bowl, but it’s going about as well as I’d imagined it would: more failure than success, tons of paper towels being used, and me wondering just when in my life things will ever begin to feel simple again. Mythical wife reminded me that we’re parents now, which is to say, that probably never.
This isn’t to say that I’m miserable doing it, but I’d be lying that it isn’t exhausting work in a variety of ways. It’s physically demanding because I’m constantly in a squat but can’t sit, because I have to be able to spring up at a moment’s notice to usher my kid to the trainer when she inevitably breaks the seal and begins gushing like a hose periodically, and I’m often bent and crouched, and considering I haven’t worked out in nearly two years, I’m physically getting wrecked.
It’s also yet another emotional milestone in which I’m realizing just how fast my first child really is growing, leading me to be all Soun Tendo emotional dad when I stop and think about it. Honestly, I’ve been changing diapers for so long now that it’s just kind of like second nature to me, and it’s not something that’s ever really bothered me, so I’m kind of in this mindset that I’d rather stick to the simplicity of diapers versus the hard fucking work of potty training, regardless of the inevitable win that the latter really is in comparison.
But my first little girl is growing up, and it’s potty training today, and then teaching her to drive a stick shift tomorrow, with trying to teach financial responsibility all the time in between. However, until then, there’s going to be a whole lot of toddler excrement in the coming days. FML
