Excited for Poop

A few weeks ago we noticed that Benjamin was giving us signs that he might be ready to start potty training. We found that he would take the small basket in which we drop his wet diapers and set the basket on top of the garbage can in the kitchen. Another time he went into his room and came out with a new diaper to show us he needed to be changed.

So Cathy went out and got him his first training potty which was of course Elmo. We sort of just left it in our bathroom not really knowing how we would introduce it to him. Then he started to go to it and sit down if he saw one of us go in to our water closet.

I tried sitting him down a couple of times and mimicking the grunts he makes right before one of his dirty diapers and I think he got the concept he just wasn't ready to go.

Well yesterday morning I decided that I was going to have a breakthrough with him right after breakfast. This kid is like clockwork every morning. About five minutes after he finishes breakfast he always starts to squat and grunt. So I decided that Friday morning we'd go straight to the potty after his breakfast and wait for nature to take its course.

I sat there with him and turned the pages of his Elmo book while he sat on the potty. He seemed entertained with the whole reading on the potty part. In fact, Benjamin took the book from me and looked through it all by himself trying to figure out how Elmo got back to Sesame Street.

Then I noticed him tinkling and it was going into the potty. And then I saw the poop. I had never been so happy to see poop as I was at that moment. I lifted my naked man up in to the air and he and Daddy celebrated.

As I took him back to his room (I forgot to bring the wipes over) I kept giving him positive reenforcement of what he'd just accomplished. "Yeah, Benjamin! Yeah, you used the potty," I said lifting him up in the air as he smiled.

Wiping is so much easier with the potty compared to when it's in the diaper. And the best part was I got to put the old (still dry) diaper back on him.

It was yet another point in my life where I realized that parenthood is so different than my life before. Nowadays I get teary-eyed over a little pile of poop in a little potty that doesn't even flush. Before I'd be equally excited about getting second row seats to U2 (don't get me wrong I got excited earlier this week when my tickets for U2's Tampa concert came in the mail). This just feels greater because I'm impacting my son's life and not just my own.