Poor Potty

This is the fancy-schmancy, bells-and-whistles, super-deluxe training potty that we purchased last week out of desperation. And this is how it has sat since then, completely neglected. No "Welcome Back" songs sung. No deposits detected by the in-bowl sensors. No "You Did It!" songs sung. No flushing sound effects played. No stickers spat out of the side and placed triumphantly on the Rewards Chart. No Mommy gleefully throwing away the size-five Huggies. We are still exactly where we were last week: with nothing but one spectacularly stubborn three-year-old.

Let me start at the beginning. It is September 2003, and we are on vacation in San Diego. 30-month old Haley comes down the stairs one evening, holding her diaper. "Mommy!" She exclaims. "I took off my diaper and did pee-pees in the potty!" And that was it - she was trained. We came home and threw out the diapers, bought big-girl undies, and off Haley skipped into the world of toilet-users. She never even used the training potty I'd bought; she went straight for the big toilet. I didn't have to do a thing.

Now fast-forward to 2007-2008 (you'll notice that this process has already spanned two different years). All of the magazines and books and moms-who've-been-there warned that boys are later and harder to train, so I can't say that this was unexpected. But come on. Carter is impossible. I've begged. I've pleaded. I've put him in underwear and let him wet himself, hoping he'd be uncomfortable. He's not. I've tried everything short of reaching up there and pulling the deposits out myself. Carter is still in diapers. So finally we bought the fancy-schmancy potty. Carter took one look at it and screamed for "his potty", which is the boring potty that I bought for Haley back in '03. He wants nothing to do with the new potty. I even made Haley use it for two days straight so Carter could see how fun it was. She'd sit on it and we'd sing along with the songs, then jump and clap like idiots before grandly awarding her one of Carter's chocolate chip rewards. After the first couple of times, Carter didn't even look up from his toys anymore.

So here I am, still with three boys in diapers and at my wit's end. I don't know what else to do. I just hope Huggies will custom-make some size-13 diapers for my son when he's a teenager. And I hope he learns to change them himself before he leaves for college.