Cinda Wella

[naomikritzer]

The way I potty-trained Molly was this: at some point, when she was a little over two, I told her that she could wear a pull-up diaper if she would sit on the potty and try to pee before I put it on. She didn't have to pee, she just had to sit. If she pooped in the potty, she got to wear underwear for as long as she could keep it dry. I made no particular other effort to get her to train, because I am lazy. I would much rather change poopy diapers than wash poop out of clothes. About a month before her third birthday, she pooped in the potty one night and announced she wanted to wear underwear. We didn't want to put her to bed in underwear, so I promised her undies first thing the next day. She was dry through the day and wanted to wear underwear to bed, so we let her. And that was it. She's had a few accidents, but only a few. (A few times the accidents have involved poop, and you know what, I just threw away the underwear involved. Yuck.)

A few quirks: Molly always preferred an insert seat (on a regular toilet) to a potty. Which was good, because our bathroom is really small. Also, Molly as a toddler thrived on variety. She wanted to be able to choose from both boy and girl designs, plus the gender-neutral Target brand. When she potty trained, I bought her four different characters of underwear out of fear that she'd get bored with underwear and want to go back to diapers.

Kiera is now two, and sometime back started occasionally sitting on the potty (toilet + insert seat), so I bought her some pull-ups and offered her the same deal as with Molly. Kiera was intrigued by the pull-ups and would sit on the potty at least occasionally to get to wear one. But then....then we rented Cinderella. The girl-design Huggies are Disney Princess pull-ups. The pack comes with two kinds: one shows Cinderella by herself, the other shows her with Belle (from Beauty and the Beast) and the princes (Jasmine?) from Aladdin. Kiera was initially really excited to discover Cinderella on her diapers. But then she got picky. She wants the ones with JUST Cinderella. None of this Cinderella-plus-her-sorority-sisters business.

I think the most straightforward solution to this is to rent Aladdin or Beauty and the Beast. Although the question is, will she then decide that she only wants the three-princess diapers?

(We had no working DVD player or VCR until a few weeks ago. So the only Disney movies they've seen are Finding Nemo, which we saw in the theaters, and now Cinderella, which we rented two Fridays ago. They both liked Cinderella, though the weird Disney ability to sink their claws into the minds of the young was most visible with Kiera.)

Comments

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I approve of putting princesses on an item specifically intended to be pooped upon. At least the princes should get equal time.

[naomikritzer]

There is no Disney Prince fraternity to go along with the Disney Princess sorority. The Princesses, incidentally, show up on everything from sheets to shoes. Molly is on her second set of Disney Princess pink mary janes from Target, which she chose not for the Princesses, but for their relative comfort.

The boy-style Huggies have Bob the Builder on them, or maybe Thomas the Tank Engine.

Where the heck the Disney Princes are while the Princesses run around selling shoes and diapers is an interesting question that I bet Sarah Ferguson could provide a nice snarky answer for.

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

If the image is going to be pooped on, it would make more sense to feature images of villains:
Poop on Madam Mim!
Poop on Malificent!
Poop on Ursula the Sea Witch!
Poop on Cruella deVille!

Say; were there any male Disney villains?

[naomikritzer]

You're inserting adult logic into this. The critical thing to realize is that a toddler thinks of their poop as a good thing, even if they'll agree with you that it's yucky and refrain from using it to fingerpaint on the walls.

Now, the American flag diapers I saw once -- those, I can't explain to you.

(And the villain in Beauty and the Beast is a man. I forget his name.)

[naomikritzer]

Other male Disney villains show up in Aladdin and Lion King.

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

Thanks for reminding me of the few male villains. A person could get a complex from an unrelieved diet of all-female villains.

Yes; my logic is adult logic, and it works for monkeys, too. Maybe it's healthier that tots don't see things that way.

If diapers have pictures on them, it makes sense to me to have pictures of flowers and other growing things; then parents would have a natural lead-in to explaining how one thing fertilizes another.