Potty training

For the most part, I haven't been taking Abby's potty training too seriously. Basically, she tries to go before baths and occasionally during the day when it seemed she was interested. She usually goes (#1) about half of the time, so we're off to a good start. Anyway, today after church was leaning on the ottoman, assuming her position for pooping. I asked her if she wanted to try the potty chair and she said "Yes" and nodded so we went to the bathroom and I took off her diaper and she sat on the potty chair for a few seconds. She looked down and didn't see anything and I knew she just needed some more time. So I encouraged her to sit down a bit longer, and she sat for about 5 more seconds, then was back up.

I knew she had to go, but just needed a little more time, so I decided to let her go about without a diaper for a bit. I figured that I'd give her a few minutes and see if she'd approach the potty chair on her own, then put a diaper on her. Well, the boys then attacked me with their new library books and we cuddled up in our big leather chair to read about dinosaurs and sharks. Abby was playing near us on the floor and ottoman.

After awhile I noticed something stinky and told Jason that I was quite busy with the boys, so would he please go change Abby's diaper? He really hates changing dirty diapers, but I thought he would maybe do it since the boys and I were so engrossed in our activities. At that point, I asked Abby if she was poopy and if she needed a new diaper. She just kind of whimpered and held our her hand to me. She had something in it..."What is that?" I briefly wondered as I held out my hand. Well, it was...um...her poop. She handed me her poop. "What is that?" Jason asked with complete disgust. Ummm, yeah, it's Abby's poop. He quickly scurried the boys upstairs away from the scene and let me deal with cleaning up myself, Abby and the poop.

I picked her up (with one arm) and carried her to the bathroom (she had, umm, dirtied her foot in the incident...) and dumped my load into the toilet. Then I scrubbed my hand and her's in the sink and cleaned up her foot. She was pretty upset by her poop and I remember Sam being a bit unsettled when he saw what he was able to produce as well (although he didn't try to pick it up). Then I got wipes and wiped up the floor in the area of the incident. Then I got disinfectant spray and wiped up the area again.

All this time I tried to be encouraging while cleaning up the mess and not reveal any disgust so as to not make Abby more fearful of going #2 on the potty in the future. I told her I was happy she made poopy and that next time she should try to potty chair. She basically whimpered throughout the episode and just seemed disgusted by the whole experience. I think this may be a setback in potty training, but I don't have much of a timeline for her anyways. Hopefully I'll have some better potty training stories to report next time, but at least this one was memorable.