Toilet Tales * Munchkins & Potty Fiascos

My son is almost five and has been potty trained for quite some time.  In fact he’s been in the process of potty training since he was about two and a half, which was a little early in my opinion.  However the daycare just started so we went with the flow.  Anyway, he’s been a pro for a while now, but continues to have an accident or two every couple months.  But that’s beside the point.  So we went to this Kindergarten Q&A at daycare a while ago and they mentioned all of the milestones that must be met and expectations we will be facing.  One of which was the fact that boys are expected to know how to use a urinal…light bulb moment!  I had not even considered this!  Anyway, we got to work on training him to go potty standing up and his Dad takes him into the Men’s Room to use the urinals.

So he’s been going to the bathroom by himself for months.  And tonight we had our second big plumbing issue of the potty training saga.  The first time was about six months ago…a couple weeks before the Super Bowl.  We had this cute Mom Invented Potty Hook from Amazon that hooks onto the toilet tank…it’s great for the BABYBJORN Toilet Trainer - White/Black that we chose.  However, the home that I recently purchased was a foreclosure and there were a number of odd things missing when we moved in, including the toilet tank covers.  Strange, right?  Anyway, I have no idea where to purchase a replacement, so we’re living with it for the time being.  Which means that there is nothing to hold the hook in place.  So when my son grabbed the potty seat from the hook it popped off and into the toilet.  And instead of going to get Mommy he just went about his business and flushed the toilet. The potty hook went down with the rest!  Needless to say the toilet did not perform to its peak after that and we had to call in a plumber.  If you live in the Seattle area I highly recommend Wezee’s Plumbing which we found by checking reviews on Angie’s List & Yelp.  They were awesome, totally worked around our nutty schedule, were SUPER affordable and got the potty hook out within 15 minutes!

After that ordeal we made munchkin swear that he would never flush anything down the toilet again unless it’s poo-poo, pee-pee, or toilet paper.  We even went back to monitoring his visits to the potty for a month or so until he regained our bathroom trust!  He’s done great ever since until just now.  He went off to bed this evening like a good boy, but got out of bed about 20 minutes later to use the potty.  I could tell he was taking too long so I asked what was going and he came to me with a guilty look on his face.  Right away I knew there was trouble and as he explained how he’d put too much toilet paper in and it got clogged so he had to put the toilet paper in the trash can, etc… As I walked into the powder room I was totally unprepared for what I was about to see.  Oh my goodness…the toilet was literally overflowing and a huge wad of toilet paper was just floating on top, mocking me!  Simply placing the plunger in the toilet caused quite the flood on the already soaked floor.  I tried & tried with no luck to unclog the thing and I began to think another call to Wezee’s was in order.  However after about five attempts it finally started going down!  Yay Mommy!  Anyway, fingers crossed that this was the last time for the kiddo plumbing fiascos!  What crazy kid related home maintenance issues have you encountered?