Thursday, February 12, 2009

Love God in the Midst of Potty Training

After Jonah got a rash on his inner thigh from an overly full diaper yesterday and all the difficulties that go along with that (doesn't want to take a bath or get a diaper change), I decided to seriously attempt this potty training thing. So today he has been in pull-ups all day. He has gone pee-pee in the potty about 7 times so far, but has pee'd in the pull-ups a couple of times as well - not to mention one poop. He is doing fairly well thanks to the M&M reward strategy. I have a jar of peanut butter M&M's in the bathroom now. He get's one for pee-pee in the potty, two for pooping in the potty and of course three if he does both. He really likes the candy so he's been very motivated so far. One time he actually told me he had to go instead of me asking him. It makes the day very full asking him every 20 minutes if he has to go to the bathroom, then helping him get on the potty and then applause for a successful pee-pee, pants up, wash hands, then get the M&M and put a sticker on his Elmo Chart, then I have to clean out his pottie and wash my hands. It's quite a production at the moment, but he really responds well to accolades so I will do my best to stick to the multi-step routine.
Then at lunch I said "Let's pray." So we grab hands (at his prompting) for grace and I say a prayer - he has his eyes closed but just keeps saying " amen... amen..." and then we're finished and I hear him say " Wove Dod wit all your heart". And I repeated it back to him and he says "yeah, Wuv God, heart". I was amazed. It was especially interesting that he said that and I don't remember saying the word "God" during our grace although I did use the word "Lord". Jonah has childcare for a couple ours at a local church where my MOPS group meets. A couple of meetings ago the teacher handed me his "art work" (scribbles on paper at this point) with Matthew 22:37 on it "Love God with all your heart." She told me they will be learning this verse this month. Kelly and I were both quite skeptical that he could in fact learn it, but it seems Jonah is proving us wrong. He's a sharp little guy to be sure.

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