Eww, de Toilet
So we've begun trying a bit of potty training with our daughter; and by trying, I mean dashing upstairs with her to the toddler toilet only to find a large slab of stool already out and waiting when we get her diaper off. Our daughter has long since mastered the phrase "da! da!," or poop in Mandarin, but only tells us after she's moved her bowels. She's accurate in her reporting about 70% of the time, and has passed gas an additional 20% of the time, which makes for being right or nearly so in 90% of her proclamations. This beats every major news outlet, really.
She seems so happy when she tells us, too; I almost can't stand trying to change anything about her habits. Who am I to stand in the way of the beatific joy in regularity? Or so I thought. Apparently, I'm forced to demand my daughter provide timely da! da! warnings so she can rattle off a few choice undigestibles into a well-reviewed plastic can purchased from Babies-R-Us for just $29.99 ON SALE NOW!
So this weekend, after several failed attempts to explain the temporal relationship between saying "da! da!" and sitting on the toilet, we resorted to using a stuffed purple gorilla and a few LEGOs stacked to approximate a toilet. First the gorilla would exclaim, "Da! Da!," and then we'd put it on the toilet. We went through the act a few times, then put the gorrila away. My daughter caught on immediately, and the results were apparent just hours later, when she suddenly began scrambling upstairs towards her plastic potty while groaning an insistent "da! da!" several times in succession. She sounded like she was really trying to hold things in - the dam was springing leaks, and she wasn't going to be held accountable for the consequences. She was nearly at the top as I beagn leaping up the stairs, taking three at a clip. I was surprised to see her run into her room rather than towards the bathroom, however. By the time I had turned the corner to see what she was doing, I knew the cause was lost. I picked her up to change her soiled diaper. At least she had tried to hold things in.
She'd simply waited to put the gorilla on his LEGO toilet before pooping.