Potty training SUSPENDED

After the most ridiculous 10 minutes I think I've ever spent, I've decided to suspend potty training, at least for the day.

This morning was a little rough on the potty training front, most likely because yesterday was crazy and we got out of practice. After she woke up, Ella wanted to wear her "big girl panties", and so began a day of potty training. She hasn't really been recognizing when she needs to go, so I've been using a timer with her and it has worked really well. Unfortunately it didn't work very well today.

While eating her cereal about 5 minutes after she woke up, she peed on my foot. And unfortunately, on the seagrass rug. I handled it fine, didn't have a fit, just cleaned it up, put some dry undies on her, and restarted the timer. When the timer went off, we went to the potty, but she didn't think she needed to go. 5 minutes later, "uh oh!" Again, cleaned up the wet spot (this time on the hard floor, thank goodness, no biggie). Reminded her that when she feels like she needs to go, we need to go to the potty. Restarted the timer again for a shorter amount of time. Went to the potty again, and again didn't need to go (probably because she'd already gone on the floor twice!).

You'd think that the past 10 minutes had been sort of ridiculous, but it was NOTHING compared to what was coming.

I was fairly certain there was *something* coming down the pipes, so I was paying close attention for any signals and thinking to myself that perhaps we should just get a diaper back on and continue that way. Ella had a fit about the diaper, so we had a little talk one more time (me thinking it wasn't doing any good because she obviously isn't understanding the "need to go" signal) and put the little Care Bears panties back on. I walked into the dining room to try to get some slippers done. And then all hell broke loose.

Ella started yelling from the hallway - right outside the bathroom - about poop on her foot. "Great," I thought, and went to investigate. Sure enough, my worst potty training fear had been realized. Poop. All over her and the floor. Trying not to gag and cursing the fact that I was home alone with her, I picked Ella up and stood her in the tub. While she yelled about "POOP! EVERYWHERE!" (pronounced "evoo-whay-oo!", I cleaned her up and mentally prepared for cleaning up the floor. I took her out of the tub, dried her off, and told her to stay in the bathroom while I cleaned up the hallway floor. Walking into Ella's room to get her a diaper and silently pledging to try the potty training again tomorrow, I found Armegeddon. Poop. On the carpet. Not the carpet! ARGH!

While I was still contaminated, I cleaned up the mess in Ella's room, cursing under my breath. I moved from her room out into the hallway, disinfecting the floor as I went, grateful that Ella had gone into the living room and wasn't getting into any of it. As God is my witness, just as I finished cleaning the floor, in trots Ella, a hundred tiny wet footprints trailing behind her. Before I could wash my hands and get a diaper on her little bottom, she had PEED AGAIN! At this point it was just too ridiculous, and all I could do was laugh as I carried her to her room and *immediately* put a diaper on her (don't worry, I sanitized my hands first). I took the Windex into the living room to clean the hardwood, and found the big ol' wet spot right on the seagrass rug. Great. Until today, we've been lucky with the rug during potty training, and the spills that have happened have largely been me spilling my wine. I got another clean cloth diaper, put it on the wet spot, and began stepping on it to sop it up. Ella thought that was great, and wanted to step on it too. Fine, I thought, and let her do her part while I wiped up the floor.

"Wrap up baby!" I heard her say behind me, and was horrified to see that she had picked up the wet cloth diaper and was putting it on one of her stuffed animals. And herself. "NO! That's dirty!" I yelled as I ran over to get it from her. I took the cloth diaper to the kitchen and tossed it downstairs into the laundry room with the rest. As I walked back into the living room, Ella picked up the bottle of Windex and sprayed herself in the face.