Potties and Pull-ups and Poops and PDG

It's decided. Potty training is the worst.

Let's add this to the list of parenting downers that no one tells you about.  Or at least, no one told me about.

I know some kids are just easy to train.  And some parents are probably better at recognizing when a kid is (the mystically elusive) "ready." Still. This seems like it shouldn't be so hard. And if it's gonna be so hard, why didn't anybody say something?!

Here's our journey so far -

1) over Christmas break declare we will be a diaper free household (obviously premature, but sometimes I aim to be the overachiever)

2) proclaim how awesome PDG is (and by default J-Man and I) when he mastered peeing in like two days

3) remain in denial when he became terrified of pooping on the toilet and saved it for a few rare night/nap diapers over those two weeks

4)feel defeated when he pooped his pants the first day back in daycare and I had to be informed he needed to stay in pullups until this was handled

5)get confused when the return to pullups also somehow caused more mini-accidents

6) wonder when my ever-regular, twice-a-day-pooper kid decided to transition into a poop-hating, backed-up, toilet-fearer

7) complain woefully to J-Man that PDG will never ever learn to just sit down and poop! (despite that somewhere during steps 1-6 he did have some success and earn lots of cookies and jelly beans and mama dances and hi-fives)

8) eventually agree that ok, maybe he will learn one day.  and it will be on his terms. and when he does eventually learn, it will be all the sweeter. and maybe in some cosmic parenting balance, it will all mean that MDG will be super easy to train. I mean, he already grabs the potty-seat, stands on the stool, and pulls down his pants. Not bad for 13 months.

Anyway, this is all to say that I have no clue what we're doing, or how many more times PDG will announce "I didn't poop my pants. I pooped my pullup!" when at a park or the Burger King playplace, or the car outside of daycare. We'll get there. And then I can stop being the mom who talks too much about poop. I mean, this is me holding back. Yikes!

But also, how great will it be when extended stays in the bathroom can look only like this?!