Trainer
So I'm a trainer. It's what I do. Specifically, I take people who may have never sold so much as a Chef's Special in their lives, and teach them how to sell a promotional product over the phone, to someone they are never going to meet face to face - 50 times a day, in the hopes that 2 of them will say yes.

That's my job.

I have taken people with literally no sales experience, and helped them to become pretty good salespeople. And I have taken people who used to think they were pretty good sales people (they weren't, they were good closers, and that's a whole different thing) and helped them take a step to an entirely new level.

So then why is it so bloody hard to train my two year old to say "Daddy, I need to use the potty now," vs. "Daddy, I'm peeing!"

At which point the inevitable headlong rush to the potty ensues, and if he gets there without peeing his pants, he gets a smartie. It's going to take a long time to finish the box.

I find myself wondering what good is all of my knowledge and training about, well, training - how to motivate, communicate and convince, if I can't convince a 2 year old that he is quite capable of running the 15 or so feet to the potty and sitting down and peeing.

We've made it easy for him. Half the time he's not even wearing pants. This has resulted in two distinct and somewhat disturbing phenomena. They are:

1. The Land Mine Puddle. At first we thought his sippy cup must have sprung a leak. No. It's not the cup. It's the boy. So we now have a box of kleenex in every room, and engage in more frequent hand washing than a MacDonalds health and safety inspector.

2. The somewhat bizarre phenomenon where he is watching TV in front of me, and chooses to bend over the Ottoman and sprawl out over it, resulting in what I have come to call "Moon over Dora the Explorer."

Now don't get me wrong, Dora is a very educational show. It teaches kids how to celebrate their victories, and that stopping a robbery in progress is as easy as shouting "No Swiping!" at the top of your lungs. And I know the writers have more developmental psychologists on board then the Durham District School Board, but let's face it, the show irritates me.

It's not so much her high pitched irritating voice. Or said voice in combination with the near hysterical tone she adopts for every single episode. Or the fact that every episode features a nearly identical quest. It's really a combination of all these things with the fact that Isaac loves it, so I'm exposed to it several times a week, most of which occur on Sunday Afternoon.

So I guess what I'm saying is that he should be mooning Dora the explorer. Not me.

But I digress.

So we are slowly but surely teaching him how to use the potty. It's actually going better than you might think. It's day 3 and already he is getting to the potty more often than not. A disturbing spanner in the works appeared this evening, however, when he ran over and peed by himself, and then wandered off back to play with his books. No request (demand) for a smartie at all. In fact the one I made a big show of handing him is still sitting on the bookshelf where he left it.

So smarties are passe, and now we are going to need a new bribe, unless of course Isaac has just decided that now he wants to use the potty every time and the smarties are therefore uneccessary.

Who knows, the kid's full of surprises.