Adventures in Potty Training: A Piss Poor Monday

Ambition. ... it's a positive trait for those who succeed, but for those who fail it's just one more reason they're a moron.  Well, we're at the threshold, firmly straddling brilliant and moronic and not certain which way we're going to go because at this point our hips are locking up on us and we're just kind of stuck here for the time being.  We decided (and like all great decisions I mean Gina decided and I'm along for the ride) that effective yesterday (Monday) we were starting this potty train express up.  The girls are 2, the baby is due in two months. ... let's get this thing rolling and see if we can make some headway before we're overwhelmed with the bean.  It's times like these that I'm fortunate to be the working parent.  Gina's method is brilliant and it shows exactly how dedicated and hardworking she is.  People might confuse a yoga instructor for being some laid back hippie, but my wife is a tenacious, determined and, yes, ambitious person.  So she took off the diapers, saddled them big girl underwear and then covered that with this shower cap looking thing supposed to keep any pee inside should they have an accident.  Here's a secret for future parents: it doesn't keep any pee inside. ... it just looks like a silly shower cap with holes in it.  Arianna did quite well. ... like, really, really well.  By the end of the day she was calling out for a potty before anything came and made it to the potty in time.  She even told me she had to poop as we were reading our bedtime stories and I told her to go in her diaper and I'd change her (she's not the greatest pooper so it could take days for anything to actually happen), but she insisted we go to a potty and not in the diaper.  It was just gas, but the instinct was there and that's important.  Also my face was right there monitoring. ... so that was "awesome" too.  Genevieve?  Oh, Genevieve. .... not so much success there.  The plan was to keep filling them with liquids and then every 30 minutes sit them on the potty till they went.  Genevieve's first attempt lasted 3 hours.  Literally.  She ate her breakfast on the toilet for crying out loud.  The only other person that did that was my grandfather and I'm pretty sure he just did it to be weird.  Then she peed in our room and just started splashing around in the puddles.  Then, after I'd gotten home, we were going to the pottys for a regular 30 minute attempts and she peed less then a foot from the toilet.  Later, she peed in her high chair during dinner. ... meanwhile her toilet remained dry and quite clean.  Add to it that when these accidents happen Gina gets excited - not like "I'm angry" excited, but more like "I'm being peed on" excited - and Genevieve's sensitive nature causes her to burst into tears in response to the change in emotion.  So now you're cleaning up pee as she (also covered in pee) is clinging on to you like a scared little monkey, instead of sitting her bare bottom down on the toilet to finish what ever else is in there.  I get that every child is different, and not all kids are ready for this at the same time, but she's the one I expected to be most ready for this.  And it's only day one.  We'll see what the stains look like after a week before we start rethinking this endeavor.  This of course is easy for me to say as I type this from my pee free office at work.  But Gina and I have one really simple parenting philosophy: children are willing and able to rise to the level of what's expected of them.  That's not to say that every kid is going to be a professional athlete or the president of America (On-Line).  But if you set realistically high goals, you'll be surprised how much your kids are able to accomplish.  They might even be potty trained with in their first month of being 2.  Then again, maybe we're just ambitions morons.