The Absurdity of it All.....Potty Training

There comes a time in every man's life when he finds himself doing something that he never thought he'd do. He says thing that he would never say. 

Things like: "Let's go Potty" 

Potty training has terrified me since the day Kate was born. There was nothing that made me look forward to trying to teach our children to use the potty. (see even saying the word potty sounds weird to me, yet here I am)

Mollie's mom bought Kate a potty (really that word just annoys me) and we've been testing it out with Kate. Not really going all out with potty training, but just giving it a try to see what's what. So it's been sitting in the kid's bathroom and whenever we go to take a bath we'll put Kate on the potty and  start talking her through stuff. That's where the absurdity begins.


One night last week we decided to try it out. I give the kids baths and so I was filling the tub up for Kate while Mollie was tending to Drew. Mollie got Kate ready for her bath and put her on potty. Then she said this:

"Do you need me to stay?"
"No you go ahead, me and Kate are going to take care of things here"

Why haven't I learned that when my wife asks if she needs to stay...the answer is ALWAYS YES?!?!?!

Molls leaves and and Kate and I are hanging out and chatting. A little time passes and I check on the bath water. It's starting to get where it needs to be when I stick my hand in it to double check the temp. It was way too hot. Hmmmm. I had to fix this. I turned the cold water on and then began to swirl the water around to even out the temperature.

Apparently, I was swirling the water a little to hard because I felt it splashing on my leg....or so I thought.

When I begin to focus on the bath I took my eyes off of Kate. She saw me leaning over teh side of the bathtub and doing something. She wanted to know what that something was. So she stood up, climbed up next to the tub and peered in.

It was then that she went to the potty. Right then. Right there. Right on my leg.

This should be a good time to mention that I hate the smell of urine. I hate taking out the diaper trash every week because it smells that way....ugh. just thinking about it makes me gag.  So it's no surprise that the first thing that I did was scream.

"AHHHHHH KATE!" I picked her up and placed her on the potty while she stared at me stunned.  She finished up on the potty.

"Mollie! I need you in here."  That phrase was more painful to say given my earlier response.

Mollie came in and immediately got excited for Kate. "Way to go Kate!......What's wrong with you" is the response that I got.

"She peed on me!"  This is where I might have had some unrealistic expectations of my wife. I expected some..."oh dear, I'm really sorry!  How can I help you out?"

What I got was...."HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA"

In fact that's what I got for the rest of the day.  I love that my wife can laugh at the crazy times in life.

Later I sat and chuckled about the crazy first potty experience....little did I  know that it would pale in comparison to my 2nd potty training experience....that was traumatizing for me AND kate. But that's another story for another time.



Jon