We’ve been potty training 2-and-a-half year old Jacob. It was one of those jobs that I’ve had on my long list of ‘Things To Do Before The Next Baby Comes’, which also includes things like ‘Get Ass Monkey To Fix That Leak In The Bathroom’, ‘Sort Out Jacob’s Photos From Since He Was Born’ and ‘Design A Multi-Million Euro App Of Some Description’. Thankfully, the potty training job one was happily forced on us in the end, as Jacob’s new pre-school required that he was outta the nappies.

I bought all the paraphernalia – the training pants, cool underpants from H&M, the Thomas The Tank Engine potty, the kids toilet seat-with-a-step-up-to-it from Argos, and another cool hippo seat to fit the toilet upstairs, even though I truly believed that he wasn’t ready. I didn’t. I thought he was too young and I’d be cleaning shite & piss off the floor for the next three months.

But he surprised me, and not for the first time I suppose. We’re five weeks in now, and not only will he announce ‘WEE WEES!!!’ or ‘POO POOS!!!’ from the top of his lungs whenever it is ‘time to go’, but sometimes…sometimes… he will quietly take himself off to do his business by himself without bothering us. That is, of course, until the deed is done and he shuffles back into the kitchen, pants around his ankles, proudly presenting his business in the potty to us. Obviously, this only tends to happen when we have company over and are in the middle of dinner. You’ve got to hand it to the kid – he certainly knows how to make an entrance.

There have most definitely been accidents (like just yesterday, when his ass stuck to the potty & he stood up too quickly, spilling urine all over the floor!), and he gets cutely embarrassed about those moments.  We try to reassure him that mistakes are FINE by us, that he’s doing great, and maybe mammy and daddy will keep a closer watch on things next time. The last thing I want is for him to become self-conscious and then blame me for his adult constipation in years to come.

However, like everything, Jacob is one step ahead of us in the ‘cute hoor’ stakes. Not only does he now use ‘I NEED A WEE WEE!’ as a delay tactic for going to bed at night and for our attention at 3am, he also has started calling our bluff when we’re out for lunch or dinner. I brought him to the bathroom three times yesterday due to a serious ‘Poo Threat’ that could have interrupted my birthday dessert (a chocolate brownie, of course, lest I should choose anything non-poo-featured). Every time we walked to the bathroom, locked the door and got his pants down, he’d shake his head innocently; ‘I don’t need a poo poo, mammy’. Every. Single. Time.

Something about taking my attention away from an adult conversation is clearly most attractive to our young son, and he knows exactly what he is doing. The day I don’t entertain it and refuse to bring him to the toilet is the day he’ll soil himself in the middle of Fallon and Byrne, and I’ll be scarlehfied. So congratulations, you have my full attention, Jacob.

Success on the potty. That is the face of a PROUD MAN.