Mr. Poopypants, I Presume?

I need to be honest with you, right off the bat. The Wife and I really have no idea how to potty train our kids. To us, potty training seems like a crazy mystical bunch of hoodoo, and we don't have any idea how it works, or what we can do to make it work. With the Girl, she just magically decided to be potty trained one day, and to this day, we don't know if we actually had anything to do with that or not.

A couple of weeks ago we thought that the Boy had magically decided to be potty trained, too, but after a week the magic quickly turned sour as he stopped being potty trained. It probably is more accurate to say that he is still half potty trained, since he does one of his businesses in the potty, but not the other business. I will let you figure out which one he does and which one he doesn't.

I used this photo in an earlier blog post, but it works pretty well here, too. I just wish the Boy was as good at going on the potty as this bear is...

What really gets our goat is that he does do that second (there's a hint there) business in the potty every once in a while. So we get all excited and let him wear his underwear, but then he will go and do that business in his pants again. It's causing a large bit of consternation amongst his parents. We just want the mystical hoodoo to happen once and for all. Anybody got any ideas?

Speaking of not being potty trained, here is the transcript of an actual conversation I had with my two oldest children, the Girl and the Boy, while driving around town recently. I thought it was quite apropos:

The Girl (to the Boy): What is your name?

The Boy: My name is Ferdinand Reginald Hanson (he said his actual name, but I changed it here on the blog, you know, to protect the innocent).

Girl: Well then why do we call you Bubba?

Boy: Because that's my name!! (His name is not really Bubba, but everybody calls him that.)

Girl: I think your name is really Ferdinand Reginald Poopy!

Daddy: What?!?!

Boy: No, it's Ferdinand Reginald Poopypants!

With that, the entire car exploded in laughter, because, obviously, any use of the word poopy is hilarious, both to small children and daddies. It was a fun time. No wonder he's having such a hard time getting potty trained...