It's potty time?

Anxiety set in as I approached the very familiar baby aisles in Wal-Mart this evening because I was about to enter a whole new world – one I am still completely uninformed about. Dun. Dun. Duuuuuhn! I bought Owen his first potty chair tonight. Potty training was not even on my radar only a few short days ago, but then a series of events this week led me to this moment.

On Monday, I discovered two other boys very close to Owen's age (one slightly older, one slightly younger) at our weekly library meet-up who are already working on potty training and I started to wonder, "Am I dropping the ball here? Is this something I need to start thinking about with Owen?" I probably would have just dismissed that thought and reminded myself not to compare my child with others his age, except for the fact that Owen has been telling me, "poo poo," usually while touching his diaper area, a lot lately. I always peek to see if he has, in fact, pooped, and he never has. But I've started noticing that shortly after telling me this, he later does poop. So, I began to wonder if maybe he was letting me know that he felt the need to go poop, which, I think, is a sign that a child might be ready to start potty training. OMG. I was not prepared for this – AT ALL!

Yesterday I took his diaper off and tried to sit him on the toilet (holding him, of course, so he wouldn't fall in), but he did NOT like that. He basically screamed and cried, so I took him down. Then tonight, I decided to go ahead and buy him a potty his own size. As we perused the potty chair aisle, Owen spotted an "Eh Oh" (Elmo) chair, so that's the one we took home. It has a button you can push and Elmo will give your child words of encouragement, like "Elmo is so proud of you," and "It's fun to use the potty." We played around with it a little bit and I got him to sit on it with his pants up. But when we tried it with pants (and diaper) off, he again cried.

So, maybe he's not quite ready yet. But when he is, Elmo will be waiting...