The Accidental Potty Trainer

I don't know what the heck I'm doing. Someone should have forced us to take a test pre-children.

Here's the thing: we keep hitting major changes by mistake. I had planned to wean the boys at about 18 months. Round about 13 and a half months, B-man stopped nursing, and before I knew what had happened, I'd weaned the boys. I had no plans to stop using a stroller, but there it is, taking up all the room in the back of my van and I realized I hadn't used it at all this winter. Now, potty training.

I'm not in a huge hurry. The boys are 31 months old. I was hoping they'd be potty trained at 37 months when they start preschool in September, but even then, we weren't too worried if they weren't.

Well, they started asking to go to the bathroom. They started complaining about wet diapers. We picked out little potties for them, which arrived Thursday. And they proceeded to sit down and use them repeatedly all day. Diapers are staying dry for the most part, except at nap time or when we've been out for a long time.

What do I do? Am I potty training? Do I get them big boy underwear and actually try to stop with the diapers?

Do they still wear diapers at nap time?

Am I ready to clean up lots of mistakes?

Are they actually ready to potty train or is this just excitement over a novel situation that will wear off?

I was kind of thinking to start potty training once the weather was nicer, like April or May at the earliest, so they could run around naked. Our house is too cold for naked-running. Will they be able to get out of their pants quick enough?

Why am I even worrying about them getting out of their pants? They can hardly keep up 2T pants as it is...they still fall down regularly since the boys are such skinny-minnies. Without the added puffiness of the diapers, will we need to go back to 18m pants even though those are way too short?

See, I should have had to have taken a test. Clearly I'm ill-prepared for this whole potty training thing and they're throwing me for a big time loop with all this being interested in the potty stuff.

Oh, yes, I know, I'm setting myself up for the irony of them never wanting to use the potty again after the novelty of the potties wears off. Here I am complaining they started potty training before I was ready, and I have this fear that six months from now, I could very well be complaining they are potty training far later than I had planned.

Parenting is hard for a control freak like me!

Random unrelated thought: We went out to a Brazilian BBQ Restaurant last night for TK's birthday. It was a dive, but so good. We have a great babysitter, who actually got the boys to go to sleep...something they hadn't done for us in the previous two nights without huge, hours long fights. It was a wonderful night all around. Great dinner, time to browse a book store, and boys who behaved for their babysitter!