Tobey: First potty

I join parents everywhere throughout history in the strange joy of your child's first poo in the potty!

This morning after breakfast, Tobey said his usual, "Tobey poo-poo chair?" which is his strange way of turning around in his booster and hanging there for a minute before coming down. It only once correlated with an actual poo, not to mention it had nothing to do with the potty. But today's poo-poo chair announcement had an urgency to it so I suggested he goes on the potty.

First he sat there for a while with nary a care in the world. He played with his fish bath toy and flipped around the shuttle book, all leading me to believe this was yet another false alarm. Except that once in a while, he'd stop and pause which signaled to me that "something" was lurking. Bored, I left the bathroom to leave him on his own and sift through a pile of "interesting" clothes that Tom's mom gave the boys again this year for Christmas. When I came back to check on him, he said, "poo poo!" with some strain and I heard a kerplop in the bucket of his little chair. I got excited and I think so did he so he got up to see and of course he was still pooping, leaving a nice little present on our bathroom floor.

In my newfound positiveness and in my joy that he actually did something (he did a poo and a pee), I was calm and stayed upbeat, despite the cleanup job that lay ahead. I cleaned him and the chair up, vowing to line the bucket with a plastic bag so cleanup in the future is easier. We kerplopped the waste into the toilet and flushed. A proud moment!

We promptly called Tom at work. He shared in the joy and heard Tobey say over the phone that he did a poo-poo in the potty. Tom's openness in the conversation led me to ask if he was having this conversation in his cube for all to hear him go, "Good job going poo-poo on the potty, Tobey!" But alas, he said there are these more private areas of the work area that he could duck into.

I have no expectations for tomorrow. Like in Joy Luck Club: "Never expect. Only hope."