A Tale of Two Sitters...

If_you're not interested in toilet training tales, feel free to piss off and read something else...

We've been trying to toilet train Liam for well over a year an a half now with very, very limited success. We feel like we've joined some weird Cargo Cult where we've been involving ourselves in all the right rituals but the mana never drops from heaven in the right place, nor zee poo from zee bum. While the saying goes "you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink" we've found things to be a little more peculiar round here. We can lead Liam to the toilet, and he will take a whizz, but we have cannot, under any circumstances, get him to get up and go of his own volition. If we didn't insist on toilet breaks, he'd not take any. The nasty stuff has been even more of a nightmare, we could count on two hands the number of times the hunt for rusty Red October has led us to the toilet bowl over the last year and a half. If we could have a dollar for every feculent nappy he's supplied over that time I'd be thinking it was time for a world trip.

This week though we've had a shift in the wind. Seems this one likes to read on the throne. After giveing him the business section to read we've had five days of nothing but net in a row. Plus the pull-ups stay dry - he might not tell us that he needs to have a pizzle, but he doesn't go between sessions either.

And on the other hand we have pretty Priya. She's well within her rights at nine months of age to expect us to do the dirty work, but she has had a most peculiar dislike for sitting up until this point. If we plonk her down on he bottom, she wriggles, leans, squirms, lunges - anything to make sure she's doing anything but sitting up like a nice normal nine month old. She reminds me of Kramer in skinny jeans in "The Wait-out".

But again, this week, things have changed. Sit her down on the floor and she stays there - for five or ten minutes. Leave the room, come back - shes still there. Rinse and repeat, and shes still there.

If you're wondering why the helI I'm writing all this its because its all made my first week as full-time parent a breeze compared to what I was expecting/fearing. Its just been fun - so I'm loving it. The crazy thing is that Saads never had it this easy - and very thankful she did the many hard yards over the last three years.