June 3, 2004 - Thursday
We're starting to get a little concerned with Jeremy's lack of progress with potty training. After his aborted attempt at underpants -- an attempt that incidentally did prove to be foolish. Right after he went back to diapers his demeanor went from brewing anxiety, no doubt a result of accidents and a feeling of failure, to a much happier, typically Jeremy -- he's shown very little interest in using the toilet. On the one hand, that is all fine. He's young and it's very early by today's norms, especially for a boy. However, if Jeremy is going to join Harry at preschool this fall, something everyone involved wants, he has to be trained, or at least well on his way to it, by some time in July.

Mary has been saying all along that there's plenty of time and that it's easier to work on in the summer when it's warm and when he can just wear underpants outside. We've very much just accepted that from her at face value. After all, there was very little else we really could do. Pushing him would be inappropriately and Mary is just so wonderful about this sort of thing. She's had so much experience with kids and is always so positive. 'Maybe,' we blindly think, 'she'll just fix everything.'

Earlier this week she started talking about getting a potty chair for outside so Jeremy wouldn't have to disrupt his play (a major deterrent to potty training) to go inside to use the bathroom so often. Meanwhile I've been thinking it would be nice to have Harry stop using the little potty chair at home, especially since he can easily just use the full-sized toilet now as he does at school. At home, Jeremy's usually been more interested in just using the toilet, too. So, I told Mary that maybe we could just bring ours over and I raised that possibility with Harry a couple of days ago. Not surprisingly, Harry outwardly resisted that and I wasn't going to push it too much, too fast.. But, this evening there was an opening:

"Harry, maybe you should use the big toilet like you do at school."
"No, I want to use the potty. I like the potty," he answered with a whimper.
"I suppose, Harry, but you know we're probably going to need to bring the potty chair to Mary's so Jeremy could learn to use the toilet,"I said no particularly thinking it would happen all that soon.
"I want to use the potty one more time." he said, probably just to convince me to let him use it tonight.
" OK, Harry," I said, but the opening, and apparently his understanding, was there. I will take it to Mary's tomorrow.


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