Poo Corner

Lily turned 18 months old yesterday--officially a year and a half! To my surprise, she has recently been starting to show signs of early potty-training readiness.

*Be prepared: we are now going to talk about poop.*

Brian and I have been laughing for awhile, because there is this specific corner in Lily's playroom that she will go to just to poo. In fact, it has gotten so poo-pular that Brian has actually dubbed it, "Poo Corner." About a week ago, I walked down into the room and smelled something awful that smell and asked Lily, "Did you go poo-poo?"

Lily held my hand as I escorted her up to her bedroom for a diaper changing, and the whole way up she kept saying, "Poo-poo..." I thought it was kind of cute, so I mentioned it to Brian and we decided that we would start saying the word every time Lily went--that way she would, hopefully, be able to connect the word with the action.

The next day, we decided to take Lily to the swimming pool and, not wanting to experience the horrible-ness of a dirty swim diaper, I told her, "Before we go to the pool, you need to go poo-poo, Lily." To my amazement, she went that very second. We were proud of her (yes, proud of her poo!), but not sure if she really did it because I told her to, or if it was mere coincidence.

Still, I could not help myself when I went shopping the other day, so I picked up the "Cushie Tushie"--a little toddler toilet seat, to go on the big toilet. Yesterday, we put Lily on it and told her to poo and she tried...but not much happened. We tried two other times and--yea!--she went, as she says, "Pee-pee!"

This morning, I walked down into her playroom once again and was greeted with a guilty look and "Poo-poo, poo-poo!" I am amazed that she has learned this concept so quickly!

That said, we are also in no hurry to start potty training. I still think she is too young to completely understand what she needs to do and I don't want to make this a frustrating experience for her. I've read that the most successful potty training occurs when you put your full effort into it around the toddler's 25 to 27 month mark, so we are just trying to introduce the world of the toilet to her at this point, as well as making her aware of what her body is doing.

On a side note, I got a good snicker today when I heard Brian discussing Lily's latest accomplishments with his brother. He suddenly chuckled and said, "When did it become okay to talk about this stuff? I guess kids make it okay..."

It's true. Nothing makes you happier to talk about (or commiserate) pee and poo than a toddler! :)