After 3 years and 9 months, I can almost say that Hurricane Hadley is potty trained. If you are thinking, “Oh, great. Another potty training post. My kids have been trained for years and what does this have to do with me?”

It has everything to do with you…and the rest of mankind. Studies have shown the air pollutants exhumed from Hadley were high enough to break down the ozone layers. The kid was a serious environmental hazard.

Join me as I reflect upon my two-year journey into Potty Training Hell…and Beyond.

March 2006: We brought home our first potty amidst great fanfare. Hadley was enthusiastic about being a big girl and using the potty. It was a bald-faced lie. Read on …

I have discovered what is perhaps the most innovative, brilliant and gloriously manipulative Santa tool EVER.

Let’s face it - those mall Santas are clueless with their fake beard and padded stomach. They don’t know who your child is or care what they want for Christmas.

Enter MakeBeliever.com.

It is a highly personalized Flash video from a live Santa that you create for the recipient of your choice, delivered by email. Recipients like…say…for your children. Children who just may have been nice or who may need a little “naughty” nudge in the right direction. Like in the direction towards a potty. Read on …

Kyra, my two-year-old, recently attended a day care where you were considered an over-the-hill parent at 25, where everyone (disabled or not) parked in the disabled parking spaces, left their Hummers humming, and allowed rappers named after pocket change to cascade freely through their open windows. Sure, it wasn’t ideal, but we probably could have been more tolerant had it not been for the fact my two-year-old’s older sister was enrolled in another day care, one more conveniently located, one whose staff would use the word “profession” to describe their line of work, as opposed to the dreaded JOB.

The reason that Kyra wasn’t at the same day care with Emma was because of their policy to only take children who are fully potty-trained. Something that Kyra was not. So, in an effort to reunite her with Emma and keep my nerves from imploding, we diligently worked on the potty training.

In all regards, Kyra seemed ready. She could differentiate between underwear and a diaper. And, whether it was true or not, she would hop out of bed and announce, “I have to go potty!” Just as emphatically, she would yell “All done!” at the appropriate time as well. She wiped. She flushed. She pulled up underpants and wave goodbye to the water. All systems were go Read on …

I have four children between the ages of ten and two. Three of them are fully potty-trained. What that means is that I was able to teach bright, albeit somewhat incoherent human beings, how to control their bodily waste removal function. Three times. Me. The girl who’s too lazy to wear shoes with laces.

It’s interesting because if I knew someone who had taught three children under the age of three on three different occasions how to crochet a doily, I’d call that person a doily crocheting pro. If I knew someone who thrice taught children how to make Chicken a la King, I’d say they were probably The Queen of Chicken a la King. Three successive attempts at teaching them to change the oil in the car? You guessed it. The Oil Changing Authority.

Yet, teaching a small child to consciously hold the pee/poop phenomenon until the underpants are pulled down and the butt is positioned on the special chair which, incidentally, has a gaping hole in the middle. THEN adding to their lesson the tricky functions of wiping and flushing before redressing? I�m sure most parents would agree that it HAS to be just as daunting a task as teaching said child how to crochet end table d�cor. So much so, in fact, that I’m back to being an amateur with each new primate, er, child-in-training. Read on …