Annabel has started telling us with regularity when she needs a new diaper. It’s usually something like, “Mama! Annie diaper wiper!” Or “Mama! Annie poop!” (sidebar, is the third-person thing a normal toddler habit, or is this some effed-up Elmo influence? Discuss.) I usually reply, “Awesome, baby! Go tell daddy.” I like this new development because she tells us immediately after she poops, which is so much more preferable to discovering it AFTER she’s ran her stink-bomb all over my house.
Although, it really messes with my Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell approach to diaper changing – don’t ask her if she’s pooped, don’t tell my husband I can smell it. Whoever smells it deals with it!
Anyway, yesterday I was at Target and I went to the diaper section to restock. As I wheeled my cart out of the baby section I passed the toddler potties. I shouldn’t have stopped…but I did. I was sucked in (no pun intended) by this sparkly beauty:
Y’all are gazing at the Princess Potty 4000. Let me hit you with its specs:
~It’s a Potty/Toilet Seat/Step Stool (three in one, homies!)
~Manufacturer’s Suggested Age: 1 Month and Up (I should have bought this MONTHS ago)
~It plays FOUR ROYAL TUNES as a reward (I’m really hoping it plays songs by Queen!)
~Maximum Weight Capacity: 200 pounds (I CAN USE IT, TOO!)
So I bought it because DUH! Did you NOT just read those specs? Now my house has THREE toilets. Easiest home upgrade ever!
When I got home I showed it to Annie and said, “Annabel, do you know what this is?” And she replied, “Chair!” “Not just any chair, Annabel! It is a royal potty throne for you to do your royal…potty…things! You are practically Kate Middleton now!” and she looked at me like she totally understood what I meant.
I pulled the potty out of the box and put it on the ground. Annie immediately sat on it…and nothing happened, because apparently the royal tunes are only activated by…waste. Ew.
But she liked the potty:
While she sat there, we had a frank discussion about understanding the signals our bodies give us, where I used important medical words like Poo-Poo and Pee-Pee.
Rigby came over at one point and she clearly had strong opinions.
She was like, “Wait, I have to go to the bathroom outside, but she can go to the bathroom in the kitchen?!”
For the rest of the afternoon Annie would walk into the kitchen and sit on the Princess Potty 4000. Practice was going great until I got up at one point and started to leave the room.
“Mama, where you going?”
“I’m going to the bathroom, honey, I’ll be right back.”
“NO Mama. Come ‘ere!”
She stood up, and pointed to the Princess Potty 4000. “Mama potty.”
I looked at her.
She looked at me.
I went over and sat on the potty.
I glanced over at Mike sitting on the couch.”Don’t worry, Mike. I’m just practicing.” For some reason, he wouldn’t look me in the eye.
When I was “done,” I stood up and Annie clapped and cheered.
It was my best potty experience ever. Thank you Princess Potty 4000!!!
Janet says:
Did it play some magical Queen tunes for you when you were done???
Karen says:
It should be illegal to make something this blatantly tempting! The very idea of being able to sneak out for a midnight tinkle just to make sure the music works is disturbing even to my warped mind. BUT I WOULD HAVE TO KNOW? Does emptying water into it work?
Annie’s expression is priceless though. I bet she has this worked out in no time.
Heather says:
OK I did a highly scientific experiment, and water works!
Karen says:
As long as you were wearing goggles, it totally counts!
Kay says:
Actually touching the silver circles (only if it hasn’t been used yet!!) will activate the music too. I have the boy version at home
lilcg says:
I am in the middle of potty training and we found a ridiculous DVD at the library that my daughter loves called potty princess. so cheesy but she loves it and keeps insisting that she is a potty princess and keeps repeating “no more diapers for me”
Heather says:
I am going to look for this!
Katherine says:
I know which DVD that is! It’s called “Potty Power”. Just typing the words makes the songs play in my head again, eeeek! But my kid loved it and I bet yours will too.
Sara says:
We bought an awesome toilet seat for our toilet that has a potty seat built into the lid. Best buy ever- she goes in the big potty and we never had to clean out a gross little potty.
Heather says:
The seat on this one comes off and sits on the adult potty – I’m hoping she will prefer that down the line.
Diane B. says:
Isn’t that the best seat ever?! I had only seen them in fancy schmancy baby catalogs for $$$ but Home Depot had them for the same price as a regular toilet set! Best HD purchase ever!
Shan says:
Lol…”This is crap” I’m still snickering. You gave me a good laugh this morning Heather! They are gross little things, but I used them with a couple of my kids, they were always afraid they would fall in the toilet…even with the small seat things you can set on them now. Also..I am a sucker for the color pink!
SJ says:
I don’t have kids, but I have one jillion nieces and nephews — the reason they do the third person thing is because WE are always referring to ourselves in third person in an attempt to get them to know who we are to them. “Come here to Aunt Stephie. Let Aunt Stephie change Luka’s diaper.” You know? “Come see Mommy, come see daddy.”
Now, because I don’t have kids, I will attempt to make it through this potty training post…but I may not make it
TamaraL says:
Poor Rigby…couldn’t she have a turn on the Princess Potty??
Natalie S says:
We have the boy version of this potty…so the prince potty?? and he LOVES it! He will be 2 in January and we’re pretty much done with the training. Nothing wrong w/ showing them how it’s done
Heather says:
Holy moly, seriously?!?! WOW!
Natalie S says:
Yeah, but seriously I can’t take all the credit. He just wanted to go on the potty..almost freakishly so.. my daughter wasn’t potty trained until 2 1/2 or 3. I just rolled with it
Heather P says:
The third person thing…. TOTALLY normal. My son (who is now 3 & 1/2) spoke in the third person from just under 2 until about 2 & 1/2…. It seems frustrating, but honestly, just enjoy the cuteness of it… it will go away soon.
Heather says:
Oh, it doesn’t frustrate me! I just wondered if it was normal, or if I finally had an excuse to ban Elmo…
Sue says:
Heather,,,,,
Just think of the time this will save you (going potty in the kitchen) when you’re doing one of your cooking segments for all of us!!LOL You could also just bring the bowl down there with you, when you need to stir something for a couple of minutes!
Adrianne says:
Hilarious. 1 month and up, huh? Guess I know what I’m doing today! Rushing out to get this for my four month old, Annabel:) Best to get this started early, I suppose!
Heather says:
Don’t be a slacker now!!!
Rebecca says:
Maybe she can come over here and teach my son a thing or two about potties…..he won’t sit on the potty for anything. He’ll pee the potty just fine and good….but still poops his pullup every single time. Please help.
Nancy [Spinning My Plates] says:
Yes, both my kids turned into Bob Dole at the age of 2. They wear out of the third person thing by about age 4.
Trisha says:
Such a cute potty chair! I got my daughter started on a similar chair by letting her sit on it to watch her morning cartoons for a bit without her diaper and she would do her business and clap and high five.
Good luck! Just remember to follow her lead and she’ll let you know when she’s ready. Patience is a virtue during this training time. I also bought a potty chair to keep in my trunk of my car. I know it sounds crazy but when you are driving and running errands and there is no stores or a place to stop in sight it can come in handy. I kept it in the trunk with wipes and it came in handy more than once.
Kelly says:
Too funny. Our potty didn’t sing, but it was pink.
I can also take no credit for the potty training of Mea. My sitter did everything.
Jessi @ Quirky Cookery says:
Lmao!! That’s too awesome.
I just deleted the next bit of my comment about a picture of mommy practicing because I realized no matter how appropriate/funny I tried to make it sound, it was going to sound dirty/inappropriate/awkward. Oops!
J. P Martin says:
You should also get her big girl underwear (if you havent already) . For my daughters 2nd birthday, someone gave her Dora panties. She innedaitely wanted to wear them. All I said was “don’t pee/poo on Dora’s head” and she was trained in days.
We also had a potty (not as elabrate as yours) but found it was a PITA to clean. The seat attachment (it had a Dora picture on it) was so much easier and just as effective (and more portable too).
Heather says:
We haven’t yet…I didn’t think I would go down that route until she was 2 1/2…but your comment has me re-thinking that!
AngieM. says:
omg…hahahahah. love that you used the princess potty 4000!
good luck with the potty training!!
xoxo
Robyn says:
From a language acquisition and brain development perspective, Annie isn’t so much speaking in the third person as she is referring to herself with a proper noun because the linguistic generalization required to use a pronoun is too abstract for the toddler brain. Elmo does it because his character mimics the natural language of a toddler–not the other way around!
In other words. . . it’s completely normal linguistic development!
P.S. I LOVE the Princess Potty. Adorable!
Dianne says:
For my daughter, we also did the “you don’t want to get your princess/Dora underwear dirty” mindgames and also had an extra potty chair in the van for emergencies. And, for the beginning of wearing underwear (when I didn’t want to risk having her pee in her underwear while in her carseat), we put a pull-up ON TOP of the pretty pink princess panties (PPPP) in order to “keep them clean.” It kept my sanity for those first few days of full-time underwear.
For my son who would willingly pee, but refused to have a BM in the toilet, we finally resorted to the “when you make poops in the potty, you get M&Ms!” Of course, his long-since-potty-trained older sister thought that was highly unfair, but it worked for our son.
Dee says:
Hee Hee, it’s her own “Royal Throne!”
Shannon C. says:
Pronouns are later developing and they are usually all acquired by around age 5. “I”, “me”, “mine”, “my”, and “you” usually start around ages 12-30 months.
Rachel says:
200 lbs or less? I could use that sucker! I don’t have kids, but I’m thinking I maybe need one for the middle of the night when I’m too lazy to scurry across the hall.
Just kidding!
….kind of.
Jenny says:
Haha, the ad above the comments is for a pink composting potty. Funny!! Annie will probably dig potty training once she figures out it opens up new fashion choices.
nona says:
There’s a toy version of this potty that comes in a set with a baby-doll bathtub. It’s not exactly the same, but very close. I gave it to the girl for whom I nanny last Christmas. I actually didn’t know there was a “big” version.
Audra says:
My 5 year old spent a solid year and a half talking in 3rd person. It was before she was really into Elmo (OK before I got over my Elmo prejudice and let her experience the phenomenon) and I was worried that she was influenced by Bob Dole. But it stopped one day as suddenly as it started.
Do not let Annie poop in the little potty. So, so, so gross. We only had to clean it out once before we realized that it could never happen again and moved the little potty seat to our regular toilet. Actually, we found that it is easier to transition kids from the potty seat on the regular toilet to just using the toilet itself than it is from the small potty.
Good luck. I hope Annie loves her new potty and toilet training is as easy for you as it was with our older daughter. She was all set by 2 years 2 months. ( Her little sister took an extra year).
karen says:
I agree about the poop in the potty.EEEK. I have 3 kids and after he potty seat novelty wore off, I went right to the seat on the toilet.
AmazingGreis says:
Gosh, Heather, if you really want to teach her how to do it no more practicing. You should pee on the Princess Potty too!! Ok, yeah, never mind, that would just be weird!
Hope Annie excels at the potty thing soon. Don’t forget to read her the Elmo Potty book I got her. I just know it’ll work wonders!!