Field Pea & Toilet Training

Field Pea

Last week was an odd week. I was expecting it to be odd because of my work schedule, which had to fit around a mid-week midnight shift in order to investigative some problems without interrupting ongoing operations. Turns out that wasn't the event of the week. Jennifer's medical crisis on Monday was the big event -- and fortunately turned out not to be a crisis. But we went to the doctor again Thursday just to make sure.

Far be it from me to explain myself on that point.

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Toilet Training

In addition to Jennifer's crisis and my bizarre schedule, I had toilet training and Sho Shin Ryu to contend with. You can make an educated guess about Sho Shin Ryu. This post is classified a "Jellybean Update," so it's going to talk about toilet training. If I were ambitious enough to add a new classification for general news without opinion, then I would be writing about something else.

No doubt Jennifer will take issue with some of this explanation, but. . . She had plans to toilet train Jellybean last summer when school was out, and kept postponing the training for one reason or another. Then, before the holidays for some reason I was convinced that it was the right time for training, and talked to Jennifer and Anita (his daycare provider) about it. At that time we didn't do anything because Anita had several babies to deal with and did not think she could devote time to toilet training until the new year. Then I learned that my boss had toilet trained his son over a (3-day) weekend, and borrowed from him a book on how to toilet train your child in half a day. He also warned me that it was not the happy event described by the book, and that it would take two or three days. By this time, however, each of my long weekends was accounted for until after Jellybean's birthday.

So, the Monday after his birthday, Jennifer called me at work around 8:00 -- it usually works that I call her when I have a free moment around 9:00 or 10:00 -- and told me that my son had, that morning, gotten up as usual and failed to come downstairs for a long time. Then she heard a toilet flush. When he did come down, he was out of his pajamas and diapers. And when she went upstairs, she found much toilet paper in the toilet (put there after the flush). He said he had gone pee-pee.

The next Sunday (because it wasn't a long weekend and the Saturday was already committed), I had the pleasure of conducting six or seven hours of intensive non-stop toilet training. What this means is that even when he wasn't on the potty, we were talking about it.

Luckily, Anita took over the next day and by Wednesday Jellybean was no longer traumatized. By the end of the week he had an accident-free day, and he is currently up to three consecutive such days.