Lesson #1

I think we're approaching potty training time, but I'm not going to lie...it's daunting. I dread having to take Mary to the potty every few minutes (or so it seems) when she's just learning. I also dread the public bathroom. At least we're in Japan and the bathrooms seems so much cleaner and nicer than in America. We've had the potty in the bathroom for a few months now, so Mary can get used to seeing it and practice sitting on it. She's still a tad bit too short to sit on it properly. She likes to scoot forward so her feet touch the floor (who can blame her?) and consequently, she's not directly over the hole. One of the play group mommies said I should have bought a local Japanese one. Duh, they'd be shorter. Oh well, hopefully, her legs will grow soon. Anyway, today I was on the computer and Mary started grabbing at her diaper (Can I say that this was the first time she really let me know her diaper was dirty? Cool). I know she just had a BM, but I thought it would be a good opportunity for her to sit on the potty and pee or at least associate the dirty diaper with potty time. Bad idea. Literally, she had just gone poo, so she ended up putting poo smears all over the potty while she was trying to get comfortable. Then, I realized she was too far forward and if she did pee, it would come spraying straight out most likely in my direction. I pulled her off and she wanted to help wipe. Yikes! What an adventure. I think I went through more wet wipes in that one moment than I do in a single day. You're lucky I didn't take any pictures. So what's the lesson? If you're going to put the baby on the potty after she's gone poo, wipe her first, better yet, make sure she can sit on the potty comfortably before even starting.