Rites of passage:The Potty training experience

Today is the day,I decided. The big day. The important day, it comes but once in a lifetime for a person. Today I will start it and Natasha will be on her way to independence. she will accomplish much! She will do great things, and maybe become president! Yes! This is the day we start her on a new life and new adventure!

Today I will start  potty training! Yes! and a new world will unfold! All right, this was probably a tad dramatic. Let me roll it back a bit.

It probably isn't the best day. We are going to Florida on Thursday for 4 days and that will interrupt the procedure, but everyone has to start somewhere.

Not that we haven't been trying, but Natasha has told us in no uncertain terms, going potty simply is not for her. yet, today we had a change of heart, I was on my computer busily twittering something I do every morning, when Tasha came up to me and gave me a hug. I asked her if she wanted cereal and she replied Yes, but she really wanted to go potty first and then eat her cereal. 

So, after about 2 seconds of shock, I flew from my computer, feet b

barely touching the hard wood floors and set up her potty, removed new pair of Christmas jeans, that had fancy new belt, removed pull ups and sat her gently in the seat of seat. 

I sat on the side of the tub, and talked to her and talked to her, and played finger games for 20 minutes. I turned the water on.(worked for her mom) and Sang songs. For 5 minutes and 15 seconds. She had a ball.

 I finally, decided that she didn't really need to go she just thought she did and that was a good start. I took her off and put her pull up back in place.

When she promptly took care of business.

I don't know whose timing was off,hers or mine, but I just sighed. Potty training can be a long process or short. 

I remember her Mother, Denise walked up to me and said Tammy goes potty, I want to to..and she did. Never looked back. 

Her uncle was a little more of a battle. He just didn't want to, but in the long run he acquiescence, I guess he discovered it was easier then watching Mommy cry. My youngest daughter was ill. She  was suffering from heart disease that would later claim her life. I was always softer on her. I couldn't bring myself to force her, so she just did it herself. One day I found her sitting on the potty like Eric and Denise. Mission accomplished. Who says peer pressure is a bad thing?

we will accomplish the training thing, It might take a minute. But more frightening then that to me, is the next project.

Yes, you guessed it. The Sippy Cup. Second only to the Bo Bo or pacifier, what just has to go. My daughter like any mother is slow in instituting these rites of passage. It takes her baby from babyhood, to childhood. getting her closer to that dreaded age, teenager and of course leaving home. 

Don't we all want them to stay at that age. I have sketches of memories, that make me smile when they com out of the blue. 

 My baby, my Sharon waking her up in the morning and her saying to me, "let me sleep just a little minute" and lying back down. How long is a little  minute? Didn't matter she got her wish.  Denise being the peacemaker between her older brother and younger sister. "it's a tough job, mom" She said once. 

And Eric, the only boy therefore he should be the boss, right? So he thought then and sometimes still thinks. His sisters put him in his place.  "Girls!" He said more then once.

Rites of passage from infant to toddler to child to teen to married and gone.  We pass through this time and it hardly seems to us we have.I think someone stole that time from us, because wasn't it just yesterday I was training Denise? not her daughter? Wasn't it yesterday, Sharon was climbing in my lap with her Teddy Bear wanting a hug? And wasn't it yesterday, Eric tried to blow up the house because he didn't know throwing lighter fluid was very flammable when you throw it on hot coals in the Weber?

Savor the rites of passage. time flies, life changes and in a moment we are training our grand kids instead of our kids. 

So, as I always say, Life goes on.