A Milestone is a Milestone

As I've noted, we've begun potty training Elliott.  It didn't feel like we were making much progress - until yesterday.  When I got home from work Katie informed me that Elliott had been wearing underwear all day.  She told me that with gentle reminders he frequented the potty and kept a single pair of underwear clean and dry.  But we still hadn't had that anticipated breakthrough when he used the potty to dispose of the "brown stuff."

Shortly after I got home, Katie asked Elliott to go use the potty.  I watched him march off through the computer room into the bathroom.  From a distance I could see him pulling down his little shorts and underwear.  The story could have ended there and I would have noted progress.  I finished unloading some things from work and began to dawdle at preparing dinner.  As I was doing so, Elliott entered the kitchen.

"Daddy, I just pooped on the potty," he said.

I had played this game before.  I would now walk back and check the potty only to find no sign of the brown stuff.  But I did my fatherly duty, I humored him.  I took the hand of the "boy who cried poopy" and made the walk of little expectation.  It is the littlest expectations in life that set us up for the biggest surprises, and boy was I surprised.  As I inspected the plastic pot nearly six feet below my unbelieving eyes, there they were, two beautiful toddler turds.  

I apologize if you are eating and my descriptions decay your appetite, but I feel like the forty-niners must have felt when their long and treacherous journeys to California were rewarded with pans filled with gold nuggets.  I must admit, my first instinct when I made the find was to grab the camera.  I've been so diligent in documenting the boys' milestones, how could I let comprehensive coverage of this one pass me by?  But I remembered that as much as I like to record these events for our sake, there is an audience too.  Further, there is always that final litmus test that many husbands are familiar with.  I had to ask myself, "If I take this picture and put it on the internet, will my wife kill me?"  The answer to that question has deprived you of viewing this forty-niner's gold strike. 

Enough on turds.  At least until Ian discovers the brown stuff.