potty in the Toilet- for real?

I think it will become a tradition to use our Mexico vacations to potty train our kids. We took only pull ups (for night time and travel) and big boy underwear for Jake and he said that we will give all of his diapers to his baby sister.

He has been going potty and poopie in the toilet for over a week now- with the occasional slip up in pull ups and then this morning potty all over my bedroom carpet.

He loves his blue boxer briefs, so hopefully he keeps them dry.

He is so proud to be a big boy.

We did not have to use the training toilet at all, so it is back in storage under the sink.

Now, he has to grow a bit taller in order to wash his hands on his own-as well as want to wash his hands after every toilet experience.

Get confident enough to pee standing up with out taking all of his clothes off (for now it is not too hard to just put his underwear back on, but winters with jeans and shoes will be a problem)

Let go of a bit of his secrecy and modesty and allow us to hold him up to a toilet in a public bathroom so that we don't have to have him take off all of his clothes on the dirty public floor, and then shimmy his tiny body around the filthy toilet.

Obviously this training is different than Maesyn- but besdies the obvious fact that he is a boy it is evident that our children will all do things differently.
1. He went right to the big toilet to do his stuff and does not mind going in all sorts of toilets.
2. He is fine making poopies and pee pees in the toilets
3. He does not want anybody to watch him go to the bathroom (Maesyn offers to let him watch her poop).
4. He totally wants to wipe on his own- with that said, I had to reach into two mexican toilets on this vacation to unclog them. At least they were in our nice clean condo and the nice clean hotel. Never the less, I did scrub scrub scrub (more than once) and covered all parts that were emesred in the toilet with hand sanitizer.

Conversation between Mom and Maes

"Mom"
"What?"
"Come here."
"What do you need? Did you poop?"
"yes"
"Come see it."
"Why?"
"Come see it, come see what shape it is."
Mom goes down the hall to see the poo- not because she is interested in the shape of the poo, but because she wants her daughter to know that she is important."
"It's so special"- says Maes
Mom helps daughter wipe
"That is so disgusting"- says Maes

The pooping place

When kids are around 18 months or so they start finding a "pooping place". My cousins kid would go under the table, hold on to one of the legs and sing while he was doing his business. If we were at a friends house Maesyn would go behind a piece of furniture- maybe for privacy? I thought because they were aware of their "movements" and made certain to find their place to make them that they were ready to be potty trained- not so. Maesyn was already 3 when she finally decided that she would be completely trained. Sometimes in the morning Jake will look out of our bedroom window. There is not much to see. Sometimes the landscaping people are working- but even if they are not there he still likes to look. This morning I realized just what he was doing. I think that the window is his pooping place. I know that he is not ready to potty train though. I think that he is genuinely impressed every time he sees himself pee in the bathtub- the look on his face is like- "wow!! where did that come from?" Once he saw Maesyn pee in the tub and thought that if only he thrust out his pelvis he would pee too. Oh the look of concern on his face. It was so cute I wanted to take a picture but then realized it would not be appropriate.
On a side note- I do not promote peeing in the bath - not even in swimming pools. It is a big no no- bathing and swimming in urine is not ok in this house. I believe I have successfully taught my children not to do that because Maesyn will get out of the bath tub to go potty. However, knowing that Jake will most likely pee in the bathtub we run the water with the plug out for a moment until the running water triggers him to go potty and then we rinse the tub. If a child poops in the tub (which happened on occasion when the kids were younger) the children are promptly removed from the tub, the water is drained and the tub and all toys in the tub get a good cleaning with a Clorox clean up. Because that is just nasty!!!!