a potty story

From what I gather, no early childhood is lacking in potty stories. Since we're relatively new to the whole potty training era, we expect today's story to be the first of many laughable tales.

This morning I awoke to the sounds of Jackson shouting "Potty!" at the top of his lungs as he stood in his crib and held onto the railing with white knuckles. I emerged from dreamland in time to shuffle across the hall to his bedroom, scoop him up from the crib, and carry him down the hall to the bathroom while he chanted "Hurry! Hurry!" in an urgent tone.

Now remember, it's winter and the temperatures have been pretty close to freezing so the house is cold in the morning when the heaters have been off for the night...especially the bathroom. It's painfully cold in that room first thing in the morning!

I unzipped Jackson's puppy pajamas and took off his diaper so he could sit on his little froggy potty. As usual, he requested a book and so there he sat with his Jesus Storybook Bible on his lap, pointing at Abraham, Daniel, Jonah, and Jesus while intermittently yelling out "Cold!" for obvious reasons as his cozy PJ's pooled around his ankles. I tried to keep him warm by cranking the heater and rubbing his back but he was covered in goosebumps as another shout of "Cold!" preceded the usual "Check it!" as he stood and looked between his legs and into the potty to see if any progress had been made yet.

Quite a bit of "reading" and quite a few Check it!'s later and we still had seen no deposits in the potty or felt any significant warmth in the chilled air. Jackson stood up and asked for a hug from me as I sat there cross-legged on the cold tile floor in front of him. The hug was really a ploy to suck some of my body heat because once he wrapped his arms around me, he didn't let go for about a minute. Suddenly, in a frantic tone, he began shouting "Potty!" and just as I was readying to lift him back onto the potty, I felt something land on my foot.

Something warm.

I tentatively placed Jackson back on the potty and looked down at the poo log sitting on my foot. Then the giant wet spot on my pajama top caught my eye.

"Jackson! You're supposed to go potty on your potty, not on mommy!"

Wide-eyed and cheerful with teeth still close to chattering from the chill in the air, Jackson responded quickly to my words with two of his own...

"Flush it!"

Which we did.

Somewhere in the dialogue that exchanged as I began the clean up of myself and the bathroom, Jackson said "Proud of you," meaning that he wanted me to tell him that I was proud of him for going on the potty. I assured him that I was definitely proud of him, just not too fond of having poo on my foot.

An excessive amount of antibacterial wipes, shower, and load of laundry later we were both good as new.