rock the potty

i have three children.  e and d potty trained themselves.  i am not kidding.  e's older cousin (by a few months visited right after he mastered the potty).  e was totally jelly and followed suit right after he left. it was three days max.  

you may remember that d wanted to rock the potty about a week before her second birthday...  while her daddy-o was preparing for the california bar exam.  i held her off until he was back among the living and she was good to go...  something like 2 and three months.  

and then there is the popster.  she loved her some cloth diapers.  loved 'em so much she had no desire to  move on.  why bother? 

at two and a half, this momma laid down the law and put my sweet p in momma potty training camp.  it was brutal.  eventually, she succumbed to the idea of letting her number one flush down the drain.  i was happy.  she was happy.  

but number two was a whole different story for kid number three.  she just didn't want to do it.  it was a quandary for me in the motherhood department.  should i keep diapering or should i just put her in panties and move on.  eventually she would get it.  right?

and so from february of last year to november of this year, my gal would let her number two loose in her big girl drawers.  gross.  but that is just how it went.  she is stubborn and i was tired.  you win some.  you lose some.

when she approached 2 1/2, i became less tolerant of the fact that this little monkey would not rock the potty.

in november, my babysitter gave me a call one night when scott and i were out.  the pops had rocked the potty!  the babysitter, having been with us for years, knew this was a huge deal.  she sang a song.  she did a dance.  she made this success be as huge as it was.  pops called to tell us the news.  we were elated.  overjoyed.  proud.

and then she relapsed.  i can't tell you why.  it is just what she did- in true poppy form, she was not quite ready to jump full hog into the number two.

am i really writing about this?  yup.  yes i am.

anyways.  in december we celebrated hanukkah with another baby-sitter/friend of ours.  we do this every year.  we celebrate her winter holiday and we play dreidle.  it is fun had by all.  the popster loves her some chocolate and she seemed to be the one that was most into this game this year.

when she left, we had a substantial amount of hanukkah gelt left-over.  i had a thought.  what if this special chocolate was just for p?  what if we channeled this love affair for gelt into a love affair for doing number 2 on the golden throne?   and so i gathered all of the gelt and put it into a mason jar.  i placed said jar on a shelf above the potty.  i had a meeting with kid three.

"pops, you rock the potty with your poo, you get a gelt.  are you down with that?"

she agreed.  and from the day the jar took residence in the bathroom, my little pops really rocked the potty completely.

this worked from december through march.  and then i noticed that the gelt was getting low.  oh no!

i had another meeting with pops.

"pops, the gelt is about to run out.  when it does, it is gone.  you are going to keep doing what you have been doing.  are we clear?"

"yup."

and so we have run out of gelt.  and a few weeks post reward, my pops is still rocking the potty.

mission accomplished.  we freecycled the training potty in february.  amen.

peace to the potty.