The Smallest Book

It's been a while since I've done one of those potty posts.  You say you haven't missed them?  I suppose I'm not surprised.  It's too late though, I've already written the post title and now I'm committed, so you'll have to bear with me through another one.

It's good to have something interesting to get the child to sit and stay on the potty so that business may happen there.  But having too much of interest in and around the potty zone is no good either.  Potty time isn't play time and it's not meant to be a long, protracted experience.  We want in, action, out.  The dilemma is, what is enough content to server as toddler entanglement devices, while not being so interesting that you're stuck there, sitting on the floor, trying to get your two-year-old to move along.

Books are great, but books can hold my son's interest for a long time.  My mother-in-law came up with the answer one day as we were dealing with lots of birthday cards and holiday cards.  She suggested putting the cards beside the potty.  Hey...this is great...a card is like a book--a very short book.

It's about the smallest book you can get, and it works well for my son.  We explain who the "book" is from, say his friend, Dexter, from school.  He looks over the card, tells me about the monkey on the front and then, would you look at that, we're done with the book.  "You want to read another book?  Okay, what about this book from Arden?"  He reads a second card and we talk about the whale and then, hey that book's done too.  I suppose we'd better move along from potty time.  I bet there are longer and more interesting books with your toys.

And just like young children, a card can be viewed again and again and still maintain the same level of excitement.  It's even nicer that that card came from someone he knows and he can talk about it.

So, we're looking forward to Valentines day because we've gotten about as much mileage from our current cards as we can. 

The Big Boy Update:  Chickenfries.  He thinks meals that involve both chicken and fries are called, "chickenfries."  We sometimes have McDonalds nuggets and fries (and those delightful apple slices too).  We often have food at a restaurant out that has some sort of chicken and fries with the kids meal.  And if he smells fries nowadays, he's likely to say, "chickenfries!" as a request for some.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  The ice machine.  She is still obsessed with the ice machine.  She likes to open and close the door, put her hand in and pull out a piece of ice, eat the ice, oops, drop the ice, get another piece of ice, and repeat.  We have to warm her hands up and change her shirt after one of these regular ice machine ventures and of course, wipe up the floor; but she's teething and it seems to make her happy, so it can't be that bad.  It's a good thing it's a continuous melt ice machine or no one would want the kid-touched ice from the top.

Someone Once Said: Anything free is worth what you pay for it.