My life for the last 4 days has been fixated on bodily functions. Everything swirls around the did-she-or-didn’t-she? question that is always hanging in the back of my head. Internal dialogue: “Has she peed in the last 20 minutes? How much liquid has she drank? What is her demeanor? Is she acting antsy? Why is she being so quiet?” And on and on (and on) it goes.

As I have learned this week, potty training is not one overarching “thing” you do, but rather a series of small modules that create the greater program.

So far, we have encountered:

• peeing during the day
• peeing at night
• pooping during the day
• pooping during the night
• peeing/pooping in a potty other than her own
• being away from the home for extended periods of time
• road trips (shiver)

Each of these is then broken into smaller subcategories such as doing it on her own or being coached.

Like a really bad poker player, Stella has many “tells” that give her away. Learning these tells has been the key to our early successes in this process. Her body language speaks volumes. Whenever she vehemently argues against getting on the potty chair, cries and pitches a fit, it means she REALLY has to go. When you set her on the potty chair and she is antsy and stiffens up she DEFINITELY has to go. When you open the car door to get her out of her carseat and she looks at you and immediately says “My no have to go poop!” you are pretty much guaranteed that – say it with me – SHE REALLY HAS TO GO. It is those times that you ask her if she needs to go potty and she casually responds, “No, not yet” that you can feel pretty confident that she’s telling you the truth. Or those times when she calmly sits there for 15 minutes without releasing a drop, that you know you are wasting your time.

So today, when I went to get her out of the car and she immediately blurts out that she doesn’t have to go poop (knowing full well that she hasn’t gone in over 24 hours), that I bring her in and then plead with her to sit on the potty before taking her nap. The first half hour the air was filled with the desparate, plaintiff cries of “My no have to go poop!” Then, exhausted, I gave up and just had her change into the pull-up and tried putting her down for her nap. 2.2 minutes after closing her bedroom door she emerged proclaiming, “My have to go poop!” So back in the bathroom we go for another hour. My negotiations included everything short of promising her crisp non-sequential bills in a duffel bag, but in the end it all paid off. Somehow, the magical potty fairies came and the skies opened and so did her bowels. All this for poop, people.

More than anything though, we are excited…and proud. She hasn’t peed in her underwear even once since we started (just 4 short days ago), and twice yesterday she made her way in to the bathroom without any prompting at all. This morning, after having her wake up twice in an inexplicably foul mood AND DRY PULL-UP we realized that she has somehow started to hold it, but hasn’t figured out that the uncomfortableness she is feeling is just a full bladder.

I would like to think that from this week on there is no going back. We haven’t used the ‘diaper’ word once since starting this process, and are doing everything within our power to play on Stella’s deeply ingrained sense of routine to make all this work.

Oh, and have I mentioned that we have successfully reduced her bottle consumption down to 2oz per serving?

Today I told Stella that I would pay her a dollar if she would just eat her sandwich normally (as opposed to opening it up and scraping the peanut butter and jelly off with her fingers). And it almost worked, too. We had a whole discussion about what she could do with her dollar (put it in her piggy bank, natch), then she decided that it just wasn’t worth it. She scraped off the last bits ‘o nutty goodness, and left the bread laying there dead and lifeless, like always. I can only imagine that – in a future attempt to salvage our bread supply – I will simply hand her two spoons, one with peanut butter and one with jelly and tell her to lick, lick away.

We have high hopes of great parental breakthroughs for the first quarter of this year. Peanut butter sandwich issues aside, there is the whole potty training thing and bigger yet, the whole getting rid of the water bottle thing. In case we were had any inclinations of apathetically letting these things limp along, Stella’s pediatrician subtly pointed out that these are issues we should have well underway by the time the new baby arrives – as there will be regression. And regression from a point where no progress has been made could get ugly. Very ugly. (She also very subtly pointed out that – at 36″ tall and 34 lbs – Stella is roughly the size of the average 3-year-old. I think this was her way of letting us know that we had better watch our backs.)

One thing we hadn’t planned on was that other, unrelated parenting issues began to arise before the new year even began. From the first day that Steve began his holiday break, our entire household went into a tailspin of routinelessness and chaos that ultimately culminated in both a metaphorical and actual perfect storm. Not only were we pummeled with a series of storms that crippled our entire county’s infrastructure, but this was coupled with the fact that we had just endured two weeks with the child who wouldn’t be told no. So here we sat – the three of us, with no electricity, no patience, no Dora, no way to escape from the maniacal ravings of a 2-year-old on the edge. We had, what I would surmise, was one of the hardest days in our short lives as parents. I can’t even put it into words. Her rage. Her fury. Her ability to scream, “DON’T WANT TO [insert action here]” at the top of her lungs. Repeatedly. One of the more ingeneous ones being “Don’t want to weep” – meaning, sleep – but she can’t quite pronounce it right. I just wanted to laugh…when I didn’t want to curl into a fetal position and cry.

It was somewhere between that one hour-and-a-half of screaming crying and that other hour-and-a-half of screaming and crying that we realized we had no other choice – we had to turn our parental tool bag upside down and shake it voilently until something fell out that we could use. And there it was, right on top of the bribery manual and next to the gag and blindfold: the shiny, still-in-shrinkwrap Time Out. Unfortunately, as with many of the tools, the instructions were minimal, and we were not prepared for how ineffective it would really prove to be those first few uses. It is hard to instill dread into an irrational 2-year-old with the threat of a time-out when they have no idea what that means. I guess it just never occurred to us that punishment only works when the person being punished actually understands what punishment means. Honestly, it was like we could have said “Okay, that’s enough, you need to stand on your left foot for the next two minutes until you are ready to calm down” and she would have had no different reaction – which, by the way, was just more screaming and crying.

Typical of the novices that we are, we are still trying to lay the groundwork that will actually teach her the concept of what consequences are, and how they have meaning to her life. Right now, she just sits on the foot of our bed, screaming for the predicated time limit (1 minute for each year old), and is then retrieved, often still crying in a fit of rage. The whole idea of “I need to stop doing what I am doing or I will have to do this again” has just not really sunk in. At least she stays put. It hasn’t really seemed to occur to her to get up and bolt. For now.

So here we were, ready to take on the challenge of potty training only to find that our optimism has been dashed due to Stella’s newly adapted rabid temper. We were SO CLOSE! And as for the whole water bottle issue, well, just the thought of what will happen should we dare even suggest such blasphemy sends shivers up my spine.

Funny thing though, I caught a glimpse of some of the other tools that are buried deep within that bag of ours and I guess that this is just the beginning of a long road that will eventually call for the use of items called Car Key Revoker and the Restrictionater. I hope they come with better manuals.