Andrew is 99.999% potty trained with his peeing. We only have to put diapers on him at night because he's a pretty sound sleeper and a pretty big pisser. But I'd say Andrew is about 90-95% potty trained with his crapping. It's once in a brown moon when he actually craps his pants, but the current problem with Andrew is that he waits until the very last moment to poop so his underwear often looks like See's Candy smocks after a long hard day at work.
This isn't a problem at home, but it becomes a little more problematic when we're out and about. We were at the mall having lunch at the food court when Andrew gave us the look. At this point, he doesn't even have to tell us he has to poop because he has a trademarked poop face. It's basically a furrowed brow, worried eyes, and clenched teeth. And the fact he's grabbing his ass seals the deal.
So I rush Andrew to the bathroom. There was only one stall open. So we enter and I notice that the toilet was...umm...how can I say this without being too explicit? Well, you know how guys are stereotypically characterized as slobs because we drop our crap everywhere and never clean up? That's literally how the toilet looked like.
I had to make a choice: do I allow Andrew to crap his pants, or do I hold Andrew over the toilet so he can crap in the toilet? And you thought Sophie had a tough choice! After seeing Andrew's worried face, i decided that I would hold Andrew over the toilet. So I layer the toilet seat with sanitary covers, pulled down Andrew's pants, and was about to hold Andrew over the toilet. But then another problem happened: Andrew saw the toilet.
"nnnnnnnnNO!" screamed Andrew.
"Andrew, this is the only toilet. I'll hold you over it, okay?" I explained.
"No no NO! It's DIRTY!!!!" yelled Andrew.
"I know it's dirty, but you won't touch the toilet at all," I said.
Andrew was getting very angry with me. "Look! There's POOP all OVER!"
Pretty soon, there might be poop all over my shoes. So I made one last attempt to put Andrew over the toilet, but I once again was met by defiance.
"THERE IS POOP THERE AND THERE AND THERE! NOOOOOOOOOOO!" screeched Andrew.
That was it. I pulled up his pants. We washed our hands. And I handed Andrew off to Lisa so she could take him to the women's restroom.
As I sat in the food court and thought about what happened, two things dawned on me. First, I realized Andrew was right all along. There was no way I would have used that toilet, so why was I trying to force Andrew to use it? I think there are times when there are remnants of the early years of parenting when your kids would do whatever you asked them to do because they didn't know any better and had no opinions of things. Sometimes I just have to remember that Andrew is no longer a baby anymore.
And the second thing I realized was the bowl of yellow curry I was eating for lunch no longer looked appetizing to me.
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