Scratch that...You can call him Lil P now

Ever since Lil E has leaped into potty-pendence, he's carried himself, at least in the path toward the powder room, with a confidence and pride and excitement that I find delightful and amusing. Is it wrong to be so gooby about your boy going Number One upright?

OK, maybe. Is this, as my mom would say with her talk-to-the-hand up, "T.M.I!"? Sure. But I think we can all agree that it is entertaining. So I will just keep going until, one day when he Googles himself as a break from writing out (hahahaha, writing out...who knew I was so old school already?) college apps, the first thousand hits on his nickname will be categorized under the urinary tract.  Not to worry, I already have a therapy trust earning a hefty interest rate as I type. Back to the bathroom...

When I introduced Cheerios as targets to help keep the
trail inside the toilet, he was excited at the novelty of putting food
into the potty. We have a strict rule about what goes in there, so this
must've seemed like a rule-breaking yeehar of a good time to the boy.



He was also excited to use up the Trader Joe's knock-off strawberry
yogurt Ohhhhhs for something other than his breakfast. I thought maybe
I could sneak in this cereal since they are half the price of real
Cheerios, but it only took one bite for Lil E to wrinkle his nose and
call me out on my Cheerio cheat.



So he aimed at them happily. Clearly, they were much more suitable for that bowl than the cereal bowl.



"Mommy," he said to me matter-of-factly as he stared down into the
floating fake pink Ohhhhhhs, "this kind of Cheerios isn't good for
eating but are reawwy good for peeing!"



Ahhh, good. So the two-and-a-half dollars a bargain box didn't go (entirely) to (ahem) waste.



So I found it quite funny when I peeked in on his potty progress the
next night and found him sitting contentedly, swinging his legs and
snacking from the Ziploc bag of un-Cheerios aimers.  When I asked if he
was actually eating the Ohhhhhs, he nodded with a smile and cheeks
bulging with knock-off cereal.



"I thought you said they weren't good for eating," I said, puzzled, not
just at what changed his mind but also who raised this kid to snack on
the seat.



"They are now!" he said with his mouth still very full. "Now they are good! Now they are fun!"



So this is how it works, I thought.  This is good to know. This could be very helpful information.



I let him be with his baggie of dual-purpose cereal, went right in and
started a new grocery list. The first item on it:  Broccoli florets.