Barnabas Monkeypants

Super-nanny Silvia was born and raised in Romania. (Transylvania to be accurate. Yes, that Transylvania.) And while she was a very young girl when Nicolae Ceauşescu (known mostly for his 30-year brutal reign of power and that funky little tail on the “s” in his last name) was removed from power, Romania in the first years of capitalism was still a poor country.

There were bread lines. High unemployment. And, of course, a severe diaper shortage.

It was so bad that infants went without a protective covering on their tushes. Children were urinating in the streets of Belgrade Bucharest. In the streets!

With few available Pampers (or the Eastern bloc equivalent), Silvia and her sister were potty trained at a very young age. And by the time they were two, they were diaper free.

Okay. Some of that was fiction. Well, most of it. Everything except Silvia from being from Romania and being potty trained very young.

And with that in mind, she suggested a few weeks ago that we too try and start potty training Henry. Yes, it seems early, but Silvia seemed to be gung ho about it and we were game too. So we bought a potty (it’s fire engine red) and set to work.

Work entailed at first having him sit on the molded plastic throne with all his clothes on. Then we put him on without his pants but still with a diaper. And then… diaperless. DIAPERLESS! For a few minutes before he goes down for his nap and then just after he wakes up, we put him down on his potty and let him just feel it out. He’s been helped out a bit by being around Vivienne (whom Silvia looks after a few days a week as well), seeing as how she’s 2 1/2 and is potty training as well and is a little more advanced.

Well, last Tuesday, Silvia calls me up at work (which is always a scary thing– why is she calling? what happened?) and announced that Henry peed in his potty. Hip hip hooray! Then Thursday, he went again. (Again when we were at work.) Twice in a week!

On Saturday (as silly as this is to say) we were ready to see our son urinate! Alas, he didn’t want to go for us. But Sunday… we knew Sunday would be the day.

So after waking up from his afternoon nap, he looked to be in the mood for some potty action. We pulled off his diaper, sat him on the potty, and, he being a boy, gave him something to read. (This is important.) Kristen and I sat down on the floor next to him and waited.

After a few pages of Each Peach Pear Plumb, it happened. Urine! Wonderful, yellow urine! In the potty!

“Yay!” Kristen and I yelled! “Yay!” Henry yelled back! Hugs and kisses all around!

And then we all ate some spaghetti.

We’re under no allusion that Henry is going to be diaper-free in two weeks (or even two months), but with the help of Silvia, we’re on the path to a pretty young potty training. Which means he’ll have beaten me to the punch by about 9 years.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 10th, 2009 at 9:17 pm and is filed under Barnabas. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.