I really don’t even know what to title this post!

This is nothing new in our household. If you’ve talked to me on the phone or Skype you’ve more than likely heard me yelling for my beautifully silly daughter to get her “hands out of the TOILET!!…. Now!” Every chance she gets she will run as fast as she can into the guest bathroom, pull her bath-time toys from their net in the tub and proceed to play for as long as it takes one of us to find her and put an end to the silliness. To be honest, the first few times I didn’t mind. We clean our toilets and that one rarely ever gets used. We have to leave the bathroom door open because that’s where the catbox is and also where the dogs get their water. Lily would always play in their water dish and made huge messes that she would then slip and fall in… so the toilet just worked for everyone and we always washed her hands afterwards. Well, not anymore. The last week we all had to start using that toilet since the one in our master is messing up regularly. And Lily has started drinking the toilet water from her tea cups. It’s not a pleasant thought for me. So I’ve been trying to crack down on her. I took these pictures the other day and that was officially the last time she would “get away with” playing in the toilet!
**And just for the record, she isn’t actually drinking toilet water in any of these pictures.**

The last few weeks she’s been coming to us when her diaper is dirty but has also been fighting actually getting her diaper changed. She hates being laid down to get cleaned up. Add that to the mounting interest in the toilet and Mommy has now decided that it is time to introduce Lilly to the “potty”. I am not at all convinced that she is “ready” to be potty trained. Nor am I looking to potty train my child all on my own since Thomas will be deployed in a few weeks. BUT… I do believe that she needs to start understanding the “real” reason for toilets and know what she is supposed to do on them [eventually]. So tonight, before her bath, she ran to the toilet to start playing and I told her that that wasn’t what the “potty” was for. I took off her diaper and sat her up on it and told her that this is where big girls and boys go potty. She sat there for a while and clapped her hands and said “good girl” a couple of times and then she wanted down and we got in the tub. I’m going to get the dog’s water bowl out again and start leaving the lid down on the toilet. I’m also going to pick up one of those little inserts that you put on the toilet seat to make the opening smaller so she can sit on it on her own. I think I’ll just take her in there whenever I need to use the bathroom and let her watch and then take her turn sitting on it by herself. Hopefully after a while she’ll get the clue and stop wanting to play in it all the time. But who knows…