Help Wanted (And Don't Forget to Comment on the Give-Away!)

Attention, everyone:  I need someone to potty train this adorable two-year-old.  I can't do it;  I'm too exhausted from potty training Xanthe four years ago, three years ago and two years ago.  It was quite a task.  In China, most people don't really use diapers.  It's hard for us to imagine how that's feasible, and it takes a lot of work, but they do it.  Babies are trained to go at the sound of their parents whistling.  They wear "split pants" so that when they squat, their pants open and they go.  When the babies are tiny, caregivers lay an absorbent cloth under them "just in case."  So much easier than diapers, right?  Except that the parents have to be hyper-vigilant about watching the signs in their baby that he might be about to go.  Since most people in China only have one child, someone is doting on that child at all times.  Ptolemy makes sure someone is doting on him at all times, too, but that someone usually isn't looking for potty clues.  Anyway, Xanthe's little body rebelled when we put her in diapers at 13 months, and it was a long, hard road to un-potty-train her and later to re-potty-train her.  In the end, I almost wished we had kept her in split pants!  You don't see kids squatting to pee in the gutter in Kaysville, so it would have been awkward to explain that.  But it would have saved me two summers of tearing my hair out at the pool.  Let me just say, Xanthe's stubborn bowels of steel took every swim diaper as an invitation.  She is probably responsible for the whole cryptosporidium outbreak.  Talk about hypervigilance!  I was on the lookout for the color brown every second, ready to lunge into the pool, pretending to save Xanthe from drowning, to get to that kid's derrierre before someone else spotted it.  A big part of the problem was the self-flushing toilet.  Curse the self-flushing toilet!  That loud, unpredictable sound caused Xanthe's whole system to seize up for days at a time.  It's not just the kid's personality that's stubborn and unbendable.  It's every cell in her body!  How do you parent that?

Ptolemy promises to be much easier to train.  All I need is someone to stay home with him for a few days and give him juice and salty treats.  I don't need handy tips;  believe me, I've read all the books and I've semi-successfully trained five kids.  I need to outsource this gig.  Tolly is so ready!   He says, "I do peeps, Mom," and he discretely hides behind a chair in my room when he has business to take care of.  I gave it my best shot for a whole morning a couple of weeks ago.  I bought a pack of undies, which I promptly misplaced.  Determined, I put Tolly in a pair of Freestone's briefs held on by a rubber band and let him run around the house, the little potty displayed in a central location.  He didn't want any juice or salty treats, he never went, and he took the potty apart and hid the pieces.  Then it was time to go pick up the kids from jr. high, get homework started, dole out after-school snacks, help with practicing and drive kids to lessons.  Who knows where Tolly whizzed while all that was going on?  It was only hours later that I realized the poor guy was still sporting Freestone's underwear under his soggy pants. 

So you see, I am completely inept.  If someone doesn't step in, I may have to wait until he can read, then let him read all the books and just train himself.  Does that sound like a viable plan?  I can't tell;  I've completely lost pee-spective.