She knows how to get what she wants (or get out of what she doesn't want)

She fakes having to go to the bathroom. That is right. My daughter is using the toilet to manipulate us.

As I have said before, Sadie is partly potty-trained, in that she has the face that she makes before she needs to go No.2, and if I whisk her away to the bathroom, she will go on the toilet. (Wow - that was a lot of commas in that sentence!)

She has also recently begun letting me know when she needs to go No.1 by tugging at her pullup or attempting to take off her pants or pajamas. (I am not getting too excited yet, since Sam did the same thing and 14 loooong months later finally made the switch to underwear, but I will take what I can get.) I make a big deal to her and clap and smile and say "good job" and she seems very pleased with herself. She gets very excited about the fact she gets to wash her hands after she goes, and all is well.

Well, all was well, until she started using this to her advantage. It started in mornings. I put her in a pack-and-play when I shower, since left unattended and loose she will open every drawer and cabinet she can find, as well as empty garbage cans and bookshelves. She was fine with this arrangement until she figured out that Sam got to sit on my bed and watch TV during my showers. Since then, she has been determined to free herself. Thankfully, she hasn't figured out how to climb out yet, and I have somehow scared Sam into not assisting her.

Since she can't climb out, she has to get me to take her out. She tried crying, but I mostly ignored it. Then it must have dawned on her that every time she makes the face, I drop what I am doing, grab her, and run into the bathroom, because the second I would get out of the shower and glance at her to see how she was doing she would make the face at me. I, of course, dropped what I was doing, grabbed her, and put her on the toilet. She'd do nothing and then think she'd just get down and scamper off - wrong-o! Back in the pack-and-play little lady!

After a couple mornings of this routine, I started ignoring the face. She got quite upset with me and then progressed to undressing. At first, she'd just unsnap her pajamas and look at me, but moved quickly to unzipping, and eventually disrobing. Lovely. Now she was standing naked in the pack-and-play basically threatening to pee all over it. So I would take her out, put her on the toilet (where she would not do a thing!) and stick her right back in. Thankfully, she finally figured out that even if she got out for a minute or two, she was going right back, and gave up on the whole thing.

So - I thought the manipulation had ended - until she started trying it in the car, apparently because she was tired of the carseat. I was usually able to distract her by singing a song or getting her to clap her hands, so I could tell if she was really serious or not. However, I forgot to tell Joe both about the fact that she was into faking it and the distraction techniques to test the seriousness of the situation.

She convinced my poor husband on the way home from church one morning (Sam and I were home sick) that she really had to go. He took one look at her outfit and decided that he would rather make a potty-stop than clean up the possible mess in the white tights she was wearing. He stopped a a fast-food place, raced her into the men's restroom where he had to wipe down the toilet to make it semi-ok to put a toddler on, removed the layers of dress, pretty panty-cover up thingee, tights, onsie, and pullup, and did his best at balancing her on the toilet so she could go. And did she do a thing? Of course not.

And then today she pulled out her trick while in time-out in her crib. I went up to check on her and found her making the face. Since she hadn't gone in awhile, I fell for it. I raced her down to the bathroom, put her on the toilet, and she almost immediately looked at me and made the sign for all done. After being informed that if she didn't go potty she was going back up to her crib, she burst into tears. She tried pretty hard to get something out, but it was obvious there was nothing coming. Back to the crib she went. However, when I went back to get her again she had taken all her clothes off.....

Persistence is a good quality, right?

(I didn't even include the potty fake-outs from our trip to the speech therapist in this story......maybe my next post.)