"I never eat poop!"

I wish I could convey the conviction with which the Papaya pronounces the aforementioned sentence, especially in conversation with a relative or friend. It's just one of the many joys of attempting to potty-train him.

Actually, as far as I know, he never has eaten poop (at least human poop; I did fish some dog poop out of his mouth at a playground in Flagstaff). But he does seem to find joy in playing with poopy water - namely, that readily accessible basin of it he finds underneath himself during his attempts at becoming a "big boy". We bought a cute little potty chair for him, but he prefers to sit on the big toilet with his feet dangling beneath him - most likely drawn to that tantalizing basin of water. So far, he's dunked his bottom in (numerous times), soaked his sock-clad feet in it, and who knows what else. He's also fingerpainted on his legs and the toilet seat with the poop he reached back and found. And despite all the fun he's having, we don't seem to be making any real progress in convincing him to deposit his poop in there on a regular basis.

Perhaps our vegetarian, whole grain diet is part of the problem - pooping 3 or 4 times a day is a normal average for Papaya - more often, in fact, than his breast-fed sister. I guess it's asking a lot of him to interrupt his play that many times a day to run to the bathroom - perhaps what that boy needs is a little more refined flour or something. We've tried to sweeten the deal by offering him candy every time he poops in the toilet. This is somewhat effective - he usually gets candy at least twice a day - but hasn't done much towards consistency. He does like to talk about it, though, bringing up the topic frequently regardless of who is listening or whether we are at the table or not: "Poop in the toilet, get candy! Poop in your diaper, get a dirty bottom!" And it is truly delightful to hear him yelling from the bathroom, "I did a weal poopie in the twoylett!"

We've now bought him (he picked it out) a train engine named Toby (from "Thomas the Tank Engine", which he loves). Toby sits on Papaya's bookcase and will be his to open & enjoy when he puts all his poop in the toilet, every single time, every single day for an entire week. So far, he's never gone more than two days in a row (and even that was pretty unusual). But we'll get there someday. Then we'll start work on getting him to pee in the toilet. Sigh. I foresee that much cleaning of bodily excretions (beyond mere diaper changes) is in our future.