Peanut is sitting—well, squatting—at the dinner table, wriggling back and forth in her booster seat and just generally misbehaving: alternately whining about and ignoring her meal. Once again, her attention wavers and she twists around in her chair to look out the window.

I don’t tolerate a blatant flouting of table manners. I tell her, for the fourth time, to sit on her heiney and put her feet under the table. I push her chair back in so that her belly is flush with the table, as it should be.

“This is how we sit at the table.”

She squawks at me in a loud, unintelligible burst of stubborn anger. Strangely, as she approaches age 3, her ability to articulate seems to have backslid to where her frustration erupts in either earsplitting shrieks or guttural squawks. Her gray eyes flare as she uses them to bore angry holes into me.

She’s thrown down the gauntlet. It’s yet another full-on challenge of my authority. My pork chops and I have had enough defiance for this particularly disastrous—yet all too familiar—sham of a family meal.

“That is enough!” I thunder. “You either sit here and eat two more scoops of your rice, or you may sit in time out—do you understand me?!” My tone is low, loud, and brokers no nonsense.

When you add some smushy cupcake to it, the chin is almost too much to bear.

And then, so smoothly, it happens yet again. Her jaw, formerly clenched in anger, softens and juts forward in a hammy smile. Her eyes, just moments ago so fiercely narrowed, now adjust angles to form a merry squint.

Her cheeks curve and expand into oh-so-pinchable mounds. And I’ll be damned if those things aren’t suddenly rosy and adorable.

“Mama Llama!” she coos, grabbing my forearm. She presses it to the side of her face and peppers it with silly kisses. “Mwah mwah mwah! Mamaaaaaaa. Llama Mamaaaaa!” It’s her pet name for me, derived from one of her favorite books, Llama Llama Red Pajama.

All traces of vitriol have vanished from her. She grins and squeezes my hand affectionately, rubbing one of those rosy mounds against my palm. Sweet mother of pearl, it is soft.

I feel myself soften similarly, even though I know I’m being played. Wouldn’t be the first time my little Machiavelli has attempted to connive her way back into my good graces with her abundant charms. Blast!

I retain my outward resolve; I know it’s my sternness that has prompted her sudden change of tack, which means, in a way, I’ve won. (Right?)

If nothing else, I know she now knows I mean business. She knows I’m displeased with her. I know she knows it, and she knows I know she knows it—hence the transformation from defiant toddler to sweet-faced cherub, using her pigtailed wiles to penetrate the soft spots she’s poked in my formidable façade.

Almost of its own accord, my expression relaxes into a knowing smirk. She turns and sits appropriately in her chair and picks up her spoon, relinquishing my arm. I use it to tweak her chin and give it a little shake. She giggles … perhaps a bit too triumphantly.   

I’ve won the battle, but her conniving has made me a merciful conqueror. In a way, we’ve figured each other out; it’s this give-and-take dance of mutual manipulation that probably characterizes most parents’ bumpy road through young childhood.

Since I aspire to raise something other than a complete sociopath, I know it’s crucial that I remain firm when it comes to discipline.

And yet, when she points her little chin out in that goofy grin, her face takes on a heart shape, and then suddenly hearts are all I can see.

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Please pee on me.

I’m quickly learning that, of all the developmental milestones sprinkled throughout a child’s first three years, potty training is the one that is fraught with the most forehead-slapping anxiety for parents.

Originally I thought I was alone in my potty hyper-focus, but a leisurely perusal of the myriad online articles related to potty training soon found me in plentiful company.

We all hate it, pretty much, and we’re all intimidated by it. Except for, like, potty-seasoned moms on their third or fourth child who’ve already worked out the training kinks and have it down to a rhythmic science.

We first-timers have much to learn from their hard-won wisdom, and I’ve scoured many a message board to greedily cull these insider tips for myself. I scoop up their shared experiences like golden acorns, tactics I squirrel away in the folds in my brain now devoted solely to getting this child to do her bizniss on the toilet.

Seriously—I have a college degree, but I can’t figure out how to get my kid to pee in a toilet. It’s a humbling, leveling realization.

As a newbie mom (relatively speaking), this goal has stretched out before me like a Herculean feat for the past three months of gradual potty training. But this past weekend, I’d had enough. It was time for Cold-Turkey Training. You basically let your kid run around naked from the waist down; it teaches them about the “sensation” of having to go and frees them from having to worry about getting down undies and pants in time.

Diapers? Done-zo. Heiney? Bare.

Accidents? Many.

Herc had to conquer the many-headed hydra; I just have to stay on top of my many-spotted carpet.

Day One went well; only three accidents and twice Peanut went to the potty of her own volition, which is key. The first time, I was dressing in my bedroom when I heard her cry, “I have to go to the potty!” followed by the thump-thump-thump of toddler feet galloping toward the upstairs bathroom. I was ecstatic.

Days Two and Three, however, were much more trying. Peanut had tired of this new “game,” despite the heaps of praise we had lavished on her, despite triumphant phone calls to her grandparents, despite the candy or sticker rewards. Suddenly, the potty held no allure, and the rumored unpleasantness of “feeling wet” did nothing to discourage her, as the multitude of message boards had said it would.

She was A-OK with peeing on the living-room carpet.

On the basement carpet.

On the kitchen linoleum.

In her cotton trainer undies.

ON MY SOFA.

No remorse, no kiddie guilt, no “oops, I tried!” In fact, she’d simply meander over to inform me she’d “had an accident,” so casually and neutrally she was essentially just filing a report.

In my mind’s eye, she might as well have strolled over to me nonchalantly and jerked her thumb back over her shoulder: “BT-dubs, Ma, I just whizzed on your microfiber sofa. You may wanna check into that? ’K, I’m out.”

Hercules’ fifth labor was cleaning the Augean stables. In order to do this, he diverted two nearby rivers into the path of the filth, washing it away in one grand, fell swoop.

Sadly devoid of superhuman strength (and conveniently located bodies of water), in the quest to keep our “stables” clean I am armed only with thinning patience, a wad of paper towels, and an oft-employed upright steam vac.

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"Oh no he *di'int* just step on my foot!"

I’m a pretty reserved person, a shy introvert by nature. Confrontation and disharmony are excruciatingly uncomfortable for me, and it takes a lot of provocation before I speak out against somebody or something.

Except, it would seem, where Peanut is involved.

Last night, I had my first heightened encounter with my latent Mama Bear, the alter ego of all mothers who rises up and takes command of one’s faculties as soon as she perceives a threat to her cub.

Husband and I had taken Peanut to Rita’s for an after-dinner treat. Peanut’s favorite element of a Rita’s visit is actually its play area, which has a big, fancy treehouse-type contraption with three slides, several swings, monkey bars, climbing ropes, etc. She played happily there for several minutes alongside a few other small children.

That is, until the gates of Hades opened up and into our quiet little preschooler haven swarmed a cluster of older boys who seemed to be in the midst of a rowdy game of tag. There were about five of them, most of them too old to be in this play area in the first place, let alone zigzagging in between swinging swings, climbing up slides, flinging themselves around, and jumping all over the place without a second thought for the 2-, 3-, and 4-year-olds who had, until then, been attempting to climb those same ladders and come down those same slides.

Out of nowhere, these boys were running completely amok, yelling at the tops of their lungs in haphazard pursuit of one another, without any consideration for the younger kids (and parents) they were near-trampling the process.

Husband and I exchanged annoyed frowns as we swung Peanut back and forth on her swing. Just then, one of the boys zipped awkwardly between her and the little boy swinging beside her, bumping into the littler boy slightly, and I hear Peanut start chanting, “Watch where you’re going! Watch where you’re going!” (‘Atta girl.)

At the same time, another younger boy who’d been playing nearby beforehand started stomping around going, “SSHHHH!!!” with his index finger at his mouth, much to his grandmother’s amusement and my not-so-secret satisfaction.

But as all this was going on around me, this chaotic din of pre-teen boy shouts and frenzied running, I could feel the transformation taking place.

In what is probably an offensive oversimplification (and yet, I’m gonna go with it), I imagine the sensation must be somewhat similar to what a person afflicted with multiple personality disorder feels like when one of their “alters” takes over: my usual self was watching from a distance as Mama Bear rose up and took over operation of my speech, gestures, and facial expressions.

Suddenly I was looking around angrily and quite obviously at the parents seated over in the eating area, trying to draw attention to myself and thereby catch one of their guilty, unsupervising eyes.

“Where the hell are their parents?! Where did they come from?!” I hollered to Husband over the cacophony. I stood there, hands on hips, marching around the playground, trying to send some PO-ed parent-to-parent psychic signal to the degenerate caretakers who were unaware that the brood of rowdy ingrates they’d unleashed on us all were putting the rest of the smaller children in considerable physical peril.

Peanut wanted out of her swing then, and I was hesitant to set her down amidst the fray. I explained to her that these “naughty boys” were very rough and she needed to be careful and try to stay away from them. So the poor thing joined the other small children who had tried to resume their climbing up the ladders and use of the slides while these boys were practically climbing up overtop of them and dashing within half-inches of knocking them down.

I was fuming, and I didn’t care who noticed. What’s more, Mama Bear was waiting, just waiting for one of them to knock down my daughter. To step on her feet. To shove her aside as they carelessly raced through the playground apparati.

Because once they actually came into contact with her, Mama Bear could let it loose. The wrath, the indignation, the outrage at their parents’ lack of supervision and the boys’ lack of consideration for those littler than them.

I wanted them to give me a solid reason to let my verbal floodgates open. I wanted the confrontation. I craved it. Everything in my body posture and hawk-eyed observation said, “Bring it on.” Give me the tiniest slip of a reason to march out into that group of oblivious parents and let fly.

But it didn’t happen. Because after a few minutes of her standing dazed in the midst of the uproar and not knowing quite what to do with herself, Husband and I lured Peanut out of the playground with a promise of her own dish of ice cream. With rainbow sprinkles.

The closest I came had been when one of the boys bumped into me and stepped on my foot, trying to fly in front of me as I stood near Peanut on the rope climb. My left arm had dropped down like a steel girder, blocking his forward momentum as I hissed, “ENOUGH.”  

As she ate her ice cream, I slowly came back to myself, and the pulsating red faded from my vision. The super-heightened sense of protective alarm that had had my nerves zapping returned to a wary prickle. Mama Bear receded and went back into hibernation until she’s needed next.

Because what Mama Bear does best — even better than furious confrontations with negligent parents and ill-behaved tweens — is find a way to remove her cub from the perceived danger. To quickly come up with a clever way to get the cub out of the situation altogether.

Even if it means employing a few of her more subtle tricks. I count rainbow sprinkles amongst the finest weaponry in my arsenal.

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“I’m toddler heroin.” Big sigh.

I came by this realization during the 60+ minutes I had just spent sitting in various cramped positions on Peanut’s bedroom floor, waiting … waiting … waiting for her to fall asleep. In the darkness, I endured the audio “delights” of all 3,856 kiddie songs on her bedtime CD as it slowly whirred to the end of its cycle.

By the way, have we noted that the farmer’s wife cuts off the tails of the Three Blind Mice with a carver’s knife? Is this really age-appropriate imagery? Such are the things one ponders as one tires of counting the tassels on one’s blanket or of staring at the shameful accumulation of dust on one’s child’s shelves.

I was doing time in Peanut’s room for our second night of sleep training using the methods of Kim West, The Sleep Lady (www.thesleeplady.com), whose book, Good Night, Sleep Tight, was recommended to me by a friend who used it successfully with her son.

It teaches babies/kids to self-soothe, which is essential to them falling asleep on their own (i.e., without you) and going back to sleep on their own during the night (instead of our situation, where Peanut comes running like a maniac into our bedroom seeking me and wanting into our bed—four times a night).

It basically weans them slowly and gently off feeling like they need to have their parent with them to fall asleep. As the nights progress, you gradually position yourself farther and farther away from them as you wait for them to doze off. It’s more complicated and involved than that, but you get the idea.

I did Night 1 and assumed we could switch off and have Husband sit with her for Night 2 … but as soon as Peanut realized it was Daddy who was setting up shop at her bedside and not me, all hell broke loose. I spent the next 30 minutes downstairs, nursing a glass of wine and trying to mentally block the all-out frenzy of anguished crying that was reverberating down our stairwell from her second-floor bedroom.

“I DON’T WANT YOU, DADDY! GO AWAAAAAAY! I WANT MAMA!!!”

I could hear Husband trying to speak to her gently and comfort her a bit, as you’re allowed to do with this training method, but Peanut was not having it.

Eventually I called my own mother. I needed a sounding board, as well as a sympathetic ear—someone who innately understands how gut-wrenching it is to hear your small child wailing for want of you. I wondered to her if my going in and taking Husband’s place would be giving in and just giving her what she wants, but, in all her mature-mommy wisdom, she put it to me differently:

“Look at it this way: It’s you she wants. It’s you she comes running to in the middle of the night for comfort, not [Husband]. It’s you she needs to be weaned off of, and by having [Husband] in there tonight, it’s like you’re making her go cold turkey.”

Ahh. Essentially, I’d inadvertently drop-kicked my toddler into the throes of withdrawal. Awesome. I so rock as a parent.

So, we hung up and I entered the fray, where Peanut was crumpled in her bed amongst strewn linens and discarded stuffed animals, her face a wet, mottled version of its usual self. Husband was sitting dejected on the floor next to her, looking like he’d been shot with a Taser. I quickly briefed him on my reasons for our switch, expecting an argument, expecting an accusation that I’m “giving in” to her and acquiescing to her loudly proclaimed demands.

Instead, he made the numbed, sullen retreat of a brow-beaten, overtired, well-intentioned parent who’s just been verbally judo-chopped by a pint-sized warrior sporting Disney Princess pajamas.

I spent the next hour waiting for Peanut’s riled-up body to drift off into Slumberland, fighting my own boredom and impatience by alternately contemplating my navel and the plight of my little mommy-addict. I resigned myself to the newly acquired knowledge that I’m not going to have any nights off during this sleep training: It has to be me. I’m the problem; I’m the “drug,” and it’s me we need to get her weaned off of.

It would seem that the 33 months I’ve spent nurturing, comforting, and loving her have led her to the logical conclusion that I will always be nurturing, comforting, and loving her.

And I will be. Just … sometimes from an adjacent room.

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It’s just that it also happens to be Peanut’s very favorite place as well, especially in recent days. At least twice a night—every night—she comes thundering into my bedroom, calling for me with a strong note of distress in her voice, her legs thumping awkwardly on the floor from the balance-ruining effects of lingering sleep.  

She wants in my bed, to curl atop my outstretched arm with her head burrowed into my right shoulder, wriggling her outstretched rear-end until it makes reassuring contact with my torso. She will sleep soundly this way for hours if I let her.

I, on the other hand, will not, and neither will Husband. So we go through periods of renewed parenting stick-to-it-iveness where as soon as she appears in our room, we get up and gently escort her back to her own bed. And when she predictably appears again 30 minutes later, we repeat the process. And again, maybe an hour after that. And again. Until it’s 6:30 and we have to get up for good.

She doesn’t seem to take the hint, and it isn’t long before a string of these sleepless nights has weakened my resolve. In the predawn hours, my body’s demand for rest swiftly overrides my rule-setting willpower, and I find myself heaving her up into my bed, preferring the pinched neck muscles I get from serving as Peanut’s body pillow to the productivity-killing fatigue I will suffer the next day if I continue to deny her entry to her fervently sought-after, queen-sized haven of slumber.

Even during the day, her love for my bed, for being in my bed, is so overt it’s charming. If she’s watching cartoons in my bedroom while I shower, she’ll happily squirrel herself away under my covers, blankets up to her chin.

She wears her love proudly: “I love yoah bed!” she will announce, grinning squint-eyed the way children do when they know they’re being a little naughty.

“Why do you like it so much?”

“I just love it, Mama. I love Mommy bed!”

(I should add here that “Mommy bed” is really “Mommy and Daddy’s bed,” but it’s usually my side that gets hogged and/or hijacked.)

“Mommy bed” has always been a choice locale for Peanut, but her passion for it seems to have skyrocketed since she was forced to surrender her pacifiers to the grabby, elfin fingers of the Nuk Fairy. This makes sense to me. Deprived of her go-to comfort item, Peanut avidly seeks comfort from another source: my bed.

If I happen to be in the bed at the time, that’s an added bonus, but it’s not a requisite for her enjoyment. She will flee her bedroom after being put down for the night and race into our empty bed, tossing the covers over her head and snuggling into my pillows. Last night around 9 p.m., the only visible evidence of our Goldilocks that Husband spotted was an uncovered blond lock that was peeping out from under the sheets, a telltale rivulet along my purple pillowcase.

And if we shut our bedroom door preemptively to prevent this, she will cry pitifully and endlessly at the top of the stairs in indignation and high-pitched sorrow.

So, each night, it seems to be a question of which undesirable consequence we’re in the mood to stomach.

I know it’s just a phase and that we may just have to ride it out. After all, she won’t still be climbing into our bed when she’s in middle school. I know that in a blink she will be 13 and thinking I’m a horrendous dork.

And I’ll be spouting wistful “remember-whens” as I recall the halcyon days of her toddlerhood, when she was a permanent fixture at my bedside, when there was no other place she’d rather be on this giant globe than nestled in bed beside me, her spine curved so expertly against my belly that you’d swear our puzzle-piece fit was divinely wrought.

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And I’ll take an easily facilitated milestone in lieu of gold coins any day. Simplicity is my currency, man.

Careful placement of the basket to ensure a successful nuk/gift transfer ...

We re-explained to Peanut that the Nukie Fairy comes to collect a child’s pacifiers, clean them up, and redistribute them to newborn babies who need them. Questionable hygienic implications aside, I thought this still seemed like the most promising ruse to persuade Peanut to finally (albeit rather unenthusiastically) relinquish her six nuks—seven if you count “ladybug nuk,” who was specially reserved for car travel.

So while Daddy had her out for an evening walk, Mommy hurriedly taped some Christmas wrapping paper into an unused wicker basket—you know, to spiff it up for the Nukie Fairy’s arrival that night. Peanut also received a personalized email from the Nukie Fairy through a website devoted solely to making this specific lie to your child just that much easier. God bless America.

Purple nuk -- her favorite -- made a failed escape attempt (with a butterfingered toddler assist).

Anyway, the three of us sat down on the floor and tied ribbons of varying colors on her pacifiers. Most of them received one last suck before she chucked them into the basket and carried them out back. We decided that her slide/climber would be a good, discreet place for the Nukie Fairy to find her basket o’ nuks. 

The next morning, in place of her nuks, Peanut found a 35-piece Mrs. Potato Head kit with all kinds of interchangeable body parts and accessories. The gift was a total score, but that doesn’t mean we hadn’t still dealt with one severely PO’d toddler come 8:30 the night before when she realized, halfway up the stairs en route to bed … that we weren’t going back outside to retrieve her nuks. 

She had looked at Husband and me with her gray eyes blazing, opened her mouth widely, and let loose a scream so powerful and shrill it would’ve made the furies proud.

(I kept thinking of her as Ron Burgundy after jumping into the zoo’s bear pit in Anchorman: “I immediately regret this decision!!”)

Playing with Mrs. Potato Head, her nuks a quickly receding memory.

Peanut dissolved to her knees in a burst of outraged anguish, but her vocal explosion was equal parts indignant rage and panicky despair, and Husband and I couldn’t help but feel sorry for her.

Although she was ticked off at having been “duped,” I could tell that her prevailing emotion was just plain sadness. She’s never known a time without a pacifier as a source of comfort, and I don’t take lightly how upsetting and psychologically jarring that loss can be for a 2 ½-year-old.

And after the initial shriek or two, her tears were different. They weren’t angry. They were grief-stricken.

I spent the better part of the following hour attempting to soothe her, alternating between rocking her in her chair and lying with her in my bed until, eventually, she quieted and went to sleep, slumped in her rocking chair with her stuffed owl wedged under her neck.

The following night, she asked for her nuk, but there were no tears when I gently reminded her that we didn’t have them anymore. And the last two nights? She didn’t ask for one.

At all.

I’m considering leaving some kind of gift of thanks at the base of the Nuk Fairy’s altar, in the hopes that my grateful offering will persuade her to put in a good word for us with the Tinkle Fairy, who comes to convince little girls and boys that a potty with pee is the place to be.

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In most households, this fantastical being is known as the Binky Fairy, or whatever your choice euphemism for “pacifier” is. Ours is “nuk,” pronounced like “book,” and, yes, completely hijacked from the Nuk pacifier brand. Much like how all tissues are called Kleenexes, in our house, all pacifiers/binkies/nippies/pacis are nuks or nukies.

Anyway, we had been sitting together in our upstairs bathroom during an Elmo-potty session. As I was seated on the floor right beside her, I felt it was an opportune setting to let her in on the mystical awesomeness of this magical creature. “Hey Peanut. Do you want me to tell you about the Nukie Fairy?”

In a hushed, conspiratorial tone, I leaned in close and regaled her with the secret story of the Nukie Fairy, who comes to collect nuks from big girls, cleans them up, and gives them to new babies who need nuks.

And the best part is that in place of her nukies, the Nukie Fairy would leave her a cool, new toy.

“What is it?” she asked eagerly, with eyebrows raised. I told her we won’t know until that special day.

To my pleasant surprise, Peanut was completely into it, enough so that I felt inspired to embellish with some off-the-cuff details I thought would rope her in further. Someday soon, she and I were going to gather all her nuks, wash them, decorate them with pretty ribbons, and leave them in a basket before bedtime for the Nukie Fairy to come and collect that night.

“Do you want to share your nuks with the new babies?” I asked. I was confident her fondness for babies/little animals/small, inanimate objects would provoke some generosity. She repeated my hushed tone with a breathy, enraptured “Yeeeeah.”

Score. Mental mommy fist-pumping.

She was so excited by this prospect that she even asked me to repeat “the story” to her right then and there, and she then told her dad and grandparents about the amazing Nukie Fairy in the days that followed.

Backstory: At Peanut’s dental checkup in January, I was told that she has an “open bite,” which often results from pacifier usage. Her top front teeth don’t close flush against her bottom front teeth, moved slightly forward to accommodate the nuk that’s frequently inserted in between.

Even though Peanut is only allowed a nuk at naptime or bedtime, and even though she’s only 2 ½, it seems that it’s been enough to affect her bite. I hadn’t noticed, and it’s not cause for great alarm, but it still spurred me into proactive steps to rid her of her nuks.

It will not be an easy task. She loves her nuks with a comical passion, earning herself the title of “Nuk Junky.” In fact, just a few days ago I discovered she’d absconded with the usually out-of-reach Nukie Box, Mommy’s off-limits container for the storage of her illustrious, sacred nuks.

I found her in her bedroom, lying fully awake on her bed with twonuks in her mouth simultaneously while clutching the four remaining ones in her claws. She was in hog heaven, grinning naughtily at me behind her double nuks and wriggling with happy, mischievous success at having managed to possess all six of them at once.

Unfortunately, after our first Nukie Fairy discussion, I had decided to hold off on what would be a cold-turkey nuk deprivation scheme due to its concurrence with her potty training. I was—and still am—concerned that too much change, too many sudden plunges into big-girl world, would be overwhelming. One thing at a time, I reasoned.

But when I resurrected the tale of the Nukie Fairy this past weekend, Peanut was totally Switzerland. “But don’t you want to share your nuks with the poor little babies who need nuks of their own?”

“No,” she answered matter-of-factly. “I need my nuks.”

“You don’t need your nuks, silly! You’re a big girl!”

“No, I need to have them.”

Crap.

I fear my opportunity ship has sailed, the elusive Nukie Fairy at the helm, gliding away on a sea of sparkles and missed chances.

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"Alas, poor Yoric, I knew him well ... "

We started potty training about a month ago. I had put off the official start until after the holidays because 1. Peanut turned 2 ½ mid-January, and 2. it’s hard enough sticking to your regular routine during the holidays, let alone introducing anything new.

The unspoken third reason, though (if I’m being honest with myself and all four of you reading faithful), is that I was content to put it off as long as possible. Not because I adore diaper changes. Both my hygienic fastidiousness and my withering wallet will rejoice the day we do away with diapers and all the related accoutrements.

I delayed because it would require both a change in my routine (not my favorite thing) as well as embarking upon something I was unsure of how to tackle. Of how to make it happen. How to transition my Favorite Little Being from a life in diapers, the only life she’s ever known, to this weird, big-girl habit where you have an obligatory, recurring date with a plastic seat into which you’re supposed to deposit your bodily functions.

It’s a strange concept, when you boil it down, but perhaps, like most things, I’m overthinking it.

I like to have a game plan, or a timeline, in all tasks. It’s all coded into my very structured, checklisted DNA. And with potty training, there are so many variables, so many up-in-the-airs:

When do I bite the bullet and start putting her in training pants? Is having her sit on the potty every three hours enough? When do we ramp it up? Should I stay in the bathroom with her or leave her alone? Do I bother with Pull-Ups? At what point do I start sending her to daycare in underwear, with 16 sets of extra clothing and a dismissive “have fun with this!” to her teacher?

So I shelved the commencement of it until I felt we were down to the six-month wire: Many sources say most kids are pretty well potty trained by age 3.

That’s not to say, however, that I didn’t introduce the potty early on. Around 18 months, Peanut started showing a passing interest in the toilet, so I figured the time was right to purchase her own potty and encourage her to have a seat on it (still clothed) whenever she felt inclined.

We settled on an Elmo potty that dishes out verbal encouragement (“You’re growing up, just like Elmo!”) when you high-five his hand-button. This turned out to be a questionable decision, as Peanut now frequently chastises him to “Be quiet, Elmo!” when her calf hits said hand-button and his high-pitched, enthusiastic commendations interrupt her pants-less reading sessions.

And marathon sessions they are. What at first was introduced as a common way to get her to remain on the potty long enough to do something in it has now turned flipside problematic: She’ll happily spend so long sitting on the potty with her 2T corduroys around her ankles, flipping through a dozen books, that when we finally coax her away she rises with a red-ringed rear-end from her overlong Elmo exposure and an empty potty to show for it.

That’s not to say we’ve made no progress. In fact, we started her formal training on a Friday, and by Monday morning she had peed in her potty. I was thrilled. But over the intervening weeks we’ve developed no recognizable pattern or regularity to potty success—it all just seems like happenstance. Plus, just yesterday we finally ended an eight-day dry stretch (literally) where she hadn’t dropped a drop into anything but her Luvs.

I’ve come to realize that, while we provided her with the joyful diversion of perusing her beloved reading material, it’s now working against us: It’s become a distraction that prevents her from actually thinking about doin’ her bizniss.

It all leaves me feeling like I can’t win. Do I just do the cold-turkey method, where we hole up in the house for four days sans diapers and let her pee all over herself and our furnishings until she understands the potty’s the way to go?

Or do we just continue plodding along at this unstructured, guess-as-we-go pace, trusting that, eventually, someday, preferably before she’s 16, it will click?

If only the Elmo potty came with the answers amidst his motivational quips.

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