This post isn’t a review. It’s not a preview. Nor is it any sort of “How To Build Your Very Own Avengers Mansion Out of Marshmallows and Toothpicks” article. Nope. Instead, it’s a post about dedication, desperation and… well… the potty.
I think most GeekDads (and GeekMoms, and heck, even non-geeks for that matter) would agree that one of the hardest parts of being a parent is potty training. Sure disciplining your puppy-dog eyed little one can be heartbreaking. Running on 3 hours sleep for the fifth week straight is mind altering. And teaching a 3 year old the crazy concept of “sharing,” is just downright frustrating. But those all pale in comparison to training your little guy or gal to sit down on that potty and do their business.
So when we got around to trying to coax our oldest son to try sitting on the potty, he wanted nothing to do with it. We bought the little Elmo porta potty and no dice. Same went for the Bob the Builder mini toilet seat that you just put right on a regular toilet. He’d just scream, put up a fight and want nothing to do with it. Forcing him to do so would’ve just given the whole potty training a very negative vibe and we didn’t want him to go into it with a bad attitude or he’d never learn. We somehow how to coax him into wanting to sit on that seat.
“If only they made a Hulk toilet seat,” I said to myself.
He was only a few years old, but my big guy was really into the Hulk. Probably because of the purple pants. Don’t ask, but for some reason, purple is still his favorite color. Anyways, we had a few Hulk dolls, books and shirts for him. So if anything could get him on the potty, it’d be the Hulk. Yeah, that’d truly be a heroic act!
Thanks to the ever-helpful Internet, it only took me a few minutes to find a “Spider-Man & Friends Soft Potty Seat.” It was perfect. A blue seat with little Spider-Man spiders all over it, as well as Spider-Man, two pictures of the Hulk, Spider-Girl, Wolverine, Storm, and my personal favorite, Captain America. It was sold out at most of the online stores I was looking at, but I found one at Toys R Us’ website. Except… it was TRU Canada. And I live in New York. And they wouldn’t ship to NY. Curses! How could I be so close, yet so far away…
I tried everything. Contacting the site. Contacting my local Toys R Us. Contacting Cthulu. But I kept coming up empty. This sad little vinyl Hulk-filled toilet seat became my Holy Grail. Nothing else mattered except getting it. And while I wasn’t about to take an extremely long road trip to Canada myself to get this sucker, I was pretty much willing to do anything and everything else. If there was a way to get the Hulk to teach my son how to poop on the potty, you better believe nothing was stopping this guy.
I don’t recall exactly how it all went down, but somehow I was mentioning this major crisis to my older sister who lives upstate. And like some kind of magical fairy godmother, she mentioned that she had friends in Canada who drive down all the time to see them. She even said she’d ask them if they wouldn’t mind buying it and bringing it down next time they visit. And that’s exactly what happened. Once it got into my sister’s hands, I didn’t waste any time in visiting her and getting my hands on that spectacular Spidey seat.
But now that I had the seat, would it work? Would this cartoony cushion be the magic bullet to solve our perplexing potty training problem? Sadly, no.
While it did work to get the big guy to sit on it and at least give it a try… he just wasn’t ready yet. So we gave it a shot for a bit, then took a break. But just as this whole quest has taught me, you should never give up. We tried again about a year later and thankfully he did take to it.
Now, well… now we can focus our efforts on getting our youngest son to sit his butt down. Unfortunately, he seems to be taking after his big brother in the same stubborn way. Anyone know if they make Kung Fu Panda potty seats?
