To Train or not To Train

You know those people who say things like, "I just lost weight too fast after having babies. Do you know any high-calorie foods I can eat to put some weight back on?" or "I just don't know what I'm going to do with all this money... it's just too much!" Well, I'm about to make one of those statements. Feel free to let the eyes roll.

I think Grace is trying to potty train herself. Not only that, but I'm not terribly happy about it.

I know, I know, I know. Some people have 4 year olds who refuse to do their business on the potty and they'd give their left kidney to be finished with diapers, and here I am complaining that my not-quite-20-month-old is figuring it out on her own. What can I say, I'm just crazy.

It's funny, too, because when I potty trained Lily she was displaying approximately zero of the "I'm ready to be potty trained" signs that all the experts say to look for. But I was bound and determined to get her potty trained before Grace came along, so we soldiered on. It took a few months (longer than it should have... partly because she wasn't actually ready, and partly because I went the pull-ups route) but we finally got there.

Grace, on the other hand, is gung-ho enthusiastic about the whole process. First of all, Lily never cared one single iota if she was wet or stinky, but Grace will tell you as soon as she's pooped, and even tells you she wants a diaper change when she's only wet sometimes. Also, whenever Lily uses the potty, Grace will start saying "pocky!" and want to sit on the potty herself. This is actually how it all started, and occasionally she would even tinkle on the potty. Now we've progressed to the point where when they were at a friend's house the other day, Goo pointed to her diaper and said "poop poop", but her diaper was clean. So then Goo pointed to the potty, and when my friend set her on the toilet, she went poop. Also, just this morning I came downstairs to see that Grace had pulled off her pants and her diaper and tinkled in the middle of the living room floor. To me, that says that she knows when she needs to go, and knows that she needs to take off her pants to go... it's just the getting to the potty that seems to present a problem.

But here's the thing, I'm about to have a newborn and the last thing I want is to be jumping up to run a baby to the potty every 15 minutes, or worse yet, having to clean up mess after mess because I wasn't fast enough because I was nursing or whatnot. Oh, and I don't want to be constantly scolding Grace for playing in the potty seat, because you know she thinks it's a toy and that the pot part is a hat. No thank you. Even if your baby is "ready" to be potty trained, it's still work and you have to be ready at a moment's notice to take a kid to the potty, and I'm just not there. I want to happily change diapers on my own time for a few more months until I have my new baby sea-legs and then start potty training. Grace seems to have other plans, though.

So I don't know what to do. I don't really want to discourage her from using the potty. I don't want to half-train her and leave her in limbo (all or nothing, folks!) I don't want her to be taking off her diaper and peeing all over the house because she's ready and I'm not. But most of all, I really don't want to potty train her quite yet.

Hey I have an idea!

I'm about to have a baby. Jim is about to be home for a couple of weeks.

Jim can potty train Grace!

Ok, problem solved folks. Back to your regularly scheduled programming.