It wasn’t long after my twins turned two that Allie took her diaper off during naptime and decorated the crib with its contents. That was it—ready or not, my twins were getting potty-trained. I figured I’d offer Nick the chance to go diaper-free, and if he didn’t want to, I would just suck it up and train them separately.
For two days before we started, I kept talking about how much fun it was going to be. “You’re going to wear big kid underwear! Tomorrow you’ll be doing pee-pee on the potty!” Luckily 2-years-olds have no idea when you’re faking, because they were so excited you’d think I was promising them a trip to Disneyland.
We started on a Saturday, so I’d have two full days of help from my husband. I was glad it was June—we could do a lot of our potty training outside and only need minimal clothing. When our twins woke up, we told them there was a surprise in the bathroom for them. We all ran into the bathroom and I announced, “your potty chairs!” like I’d just given them a puppy. Being 2-year-olds, they were completely excited and could hardly wait to get their “baby bipers” off. They both sat down on the potties and got up and sat down like they were playing Musical Chairs.
When they were settled down enough to sit still, my daughter tinkled in her potty after only about a minute. She looked as shocked as I was. I had told them their reward would be two M&Ms for pee and four for poo, but I hadn’t bought the M&Ms yet because I didn’t expect anyone to actually go on the potty the first day. That was my biggest potty-training-prep Fail.
So we promised Allie two M&Ms as soon as we bought them. Then Nick surprised us by not only tinkling, but hosing down the entire bathroom floor. I tried not to appear annoyed (because I’d read you should always look happy about whatever comes out wherever it ends up), and gave him the same exuberant praise I gave Allie.
But suddenly the chaos of twin potty training reared its head, and we couldn’t keep things under control. Nick started splashing his feet in the pee, and my husband (who hadn’t read all the articles I had about not appearing concerned over pee on the floor) began complaining and wiping it up with toilet paper. Allie stuck both hands in her potty, pulled out the urine receptacle and spilled pee all over the floor.
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