Thomas, I was too hasty...

Oh, Thomas, I'm afraid I was too hasty in my judgement of you. For now, because of you, the boy goes "poopy" on the potty willingly!

Yes, that's right, in order to get the boy to go poop on the potty we've begun to bribe him. If he goes poop on the potty, he gets one of the Thomas the Tank Engine trains. (which, by the way, fit perfectly on the IKEA wooden toy train set - way cool!)

One week ago, after the boy had pooped in his pants every day for the past 5 days (and he poops three times a day, mind you!) - with no hint of it bothering him one bit - I got desperate. He hadn't pooped all day and at dinner that night, I told him, "If you go poopy on the potty, we'll get you a train." I let this sink in a little bit and then after dinner asked him if he wanted to go poop so we could go get him a train. He immediately went to the bathroom, sat on the toilet and went poop. I was stunned.

(Sorry, had to take a break there - I heard some magical words: "I need to go potty." Wow!!!)

It was 8:30 at the time and almost past bedtime at that point, but we loaded everyone up in the car and went to buy trains. We ended up getting 11 trains, thinking that we would probably go through them rather quickly, but by that point, he might actually have the hang of it.

The rules were that he would get a train each time he went poop on the potty. BUT, if he had an accident, either pee-pee or poo-poo, then he would lose a train.

Earlier today, we were down to 5 trains. (and he started off with the 4 original ones from IKEA)

It's been a rather bad couple of days. I think earlier this week, we were up to 9 trains. I was quite hopeful at that point. But as they have dwindled, I've started to have some doubts.

We'll see. The current count is 6 - he went poop after dinner. I'll be sure to keep you updated on the count throughout the upcoming days.

But now, I'm hearing some other words coming from the living room, "You stay there, I'm going to jump over you." As a mother, I suppose I should go check on that. As a former child myself, I think I might sit here and listen for awhile longer...