Let’s Get This Potty Started!

It was like magic. Seriously. Yesterday, C and I were slouching on our couch in a state of post-work exhaustion. I was fighting back a wave of nausea, and C was trying to shake off the day’s nonsense with a bottle of lager. Emmy was busying herself with one of her toys (I think it was her baby stroller), when all of a sudden she looked at C and me and said a little word with HUGE connotations.

“Poopy”

C and I looked at each other, and then looked back at Emmy. She was kind of grimacing in that special toddler-doing-a-doody way.

“Poopy, Emmy? Do you need to go poopy???” I asked.

“I think she already IS going poopy” said C (such a skeptic, he is).

“Do you want to use the potty, Emmy???” I asked.

“Potty,” said Emmy.

The next minute was a whirlwind and a blur, a great slo-mo sequence of me trying to get Emmy to the bathroom in under 10 seconds. I jumped off the couch (to hell with the nausea! We’ve got a poopy situation to deal with)… Grabbed Emmy and ran to the toilet… Grabbed the potty seat and put it on the toilet… Yanked Emmy’s pants off… Opened her diaper to find a teeny tiny poop but figured that maybe more was on the way… Hoisted Em on to the toilet seat with eager anticipation… And Dada followed our frenzy into the bathroom, joining for the festivities…

“Shall we sing a potty song, Emmy?” I asked. Emmy smiled.

So all three of us sang “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” (one of Emmy’s favorites) together, as Emmy sat on her potty seat. And as we were singing, I heard the most joyous sound I have heard in a LONG time.

Plop. Plop plop….. plop.

I would have jumped up in the air and screamed “HALLELUJAH” if I hadn’t been holding on to Emmy (just to make triple sure she wouldn’t fall into the toilet).  C and I looked at each other with sheer surprise and utter excitement and laughed. Emmy had done it! She had recognized she was pooping and she had told us! She had pooped on the potty! It was AMAZING!

Emmy wanted to keep sitting on the potty long after she had pooped. She was very curious about the toilet seat cover, and her special cushy potty seat. But after a few minutes, she said “all done” and I took her down from the potty.

Of course, we had to make a big deal of how fun it is to get wiped with toilet paper. And we had to make an extra big deal about how exciting it is to say bye bye to the poopy and watch it as it gets flushed away. And then we had to have some serious “high fives” from our super duper big girl.

And then, of course, we all washed our hands.

I’m not sure if we will have a repeat performance tonight, or tomorrow, or any time again this week. But the fact that potty time happened once means it might happen again, and that we may very well be on our way to toilet training our daughter.

Woo hoo!