Not What I Would Have Asked Santa For

One of Patrick's Christmas presents this year is going to be a potty. Yup, it's about that time. When we went shopping for the boys' gifts this last weekend--isn't it great when they're still young enough to tag along?--we picked up a potty as part of Patrick's Christmas. Instead of wrapping it and putting it under the tree, though, we just stuck it in "his" bathroom for him to get used to. It looks like we'll be starting potty training after our Christmas trip when things will be pretty settled for a while.

I know many toddlers start potty training earlier than this. After all, Patrick is well over two years old now. But back when it first got mentioned, I realized that he needed to hit a few milestones first. Of course, he needed to be able to walk proficiently, which he's been doing for many months now. He needed to be able to sit on something like a potty, and he has mastered the art of sitting on smaller chairs pretty well--although he has yet to try on the potty.

He needs to be able to pull his own pants down and back up, at least by the time he's pretty good at going without much help, and he is showing interest in learning how to dress himself. He loves to find clothes of any sort, whether or not they fit or are even his, and sit down to try to pull them over his legs. It won't be long before he won't let me help dress him at all. So he should be pretty close to manipulating his own clothes while pottying.

And the biggie is that he needs to be able to tell me when he needs to go. His communication skills have certainly been improving, but he has yet to get good enough that I can understand him when he tells me that. I keep hoping maybe he will develop the words for pottying as we focus more and more on it, but I'm not necessarily counting on it.

But today I think he is ready because he was able to successfully communicate with me that he needed a clean diaper. I thought it looked like he was pooping as he took breaks between playing. I looked away for a minute, and when I looked up he was gone, playing in the other room where his changing pad is. I snuck up on him to see what he was doing, and the second he saw me, he crawled onto his changing pad (on the floor) and waited until I figured out he was asking for a clean diaper. Sure enough, he was dirty.

I guess it's good that even without using words, Patrick was able to communicate that he had gone to the bathroom and that he was uncomfortable enough to want a clean diaper. Both are good milestones telling me he might be somewhat receptive to the idea of pottying in a toilet. I'm glad now that we went ahead and got the potty in preparation for potty training, even though we weren't sure he was ready when we bought it. So now I wonder if that was at the top of his Christmas list this year.