Discovery

My toilet-training two-year-old made an important discovery today.

We've had a training seat for more than a month, and we've occasionally sat on it, but yesterday afternoon I decided to try some intense training. The "Three-Day Method" guarantees your child will be trained in, well, three days. I like the idea of that. It also involves staying at home for most of three days so your child can go pantless. Diaperless. Underwear-less. The idea is that when they see the "results" of not using the potty, they will want to use the potty.

So far, the Three-Day Method has been less than successful. Granted, we only been doing it for about 18 hours, and that doesn't include naptime or nighttime. But still, we're 0 for 6.

Whatever. We'll try it for another day, and if there's no progress, I'll be happy to wait another month and then try again.

However, last evening we had a very unfortunate incident.

My son loves his pillow. He loves it almost as much as his favorite stuffed animals. He calls it "Pillow," and it's become part of our family. Truth be told, it's the oldest, lumpiest, flattest pillow we had in the house, and yes, I gave it to my son when he started using a pillow, mostly because his little neck can't support a large, fluffy pillow.

But last night, when the sun went down and the house got cooler, my pantless boy got chilled. So he took his good friend, Pillow, and used it ... well, as a blanket of sorts.

Sadly, it was just about then that mama was in the kitchen not paying attention, and his other mama, Mother Nature, came calling.

Pillow suffered an unimaginable dampening of spirit.

And since it was getting close to bedtime, mama thought it best to substitute a different pillow for her son's use.

That, my friends, is not acceptable.

Our spare pillows had been used by my niece Jenna the evening before. She was visiting for the weekend, and Jack remembered.

"That Jenna's pillow," he cried in despair. I assured him that Jenna was back in her apartment in the city, had a pillow of her own there, and would not mind if he used them.

But these pillows were too fluffy. They were not Pillow. So, we had to use stuffed animals and throw pillows, with the promise that mama would wash Pillow in the morning and make Pillow clean.

There were many tears, but eventually sleep prevailed.

This morning, first thing on my son's mind was Pillow...and the impending wash. I told him that we would put Pillow in the washing machine with water and soap, and Pillow would get a bath. Jack was quite pleased with that, as he likes assisting mama with wash. But he was confused about one thing.

"Water and soap, mommy?" he kept asking.

"Yes, water and soap. In the washing machine. Then Pillow will be clean!" I assured.

"Water and soap, mommy?"

"Yes, water and soap."

Then I listened more closely.

"Water and soup, mommy?"

Ohhhhhhhhh.

"No, honey. Water and soap. With bubbles. Not soup."

I guess more washing machine instruction is required before Jack goes off to college. Hopefully by then he'll be toilet trained, too.