A Beloved Toy Story, and Potty Training Challenges

When our older son Jericho was just a little tot, Disney's Toy Story (and not long afterwards, Toy Story 2) were all the rage for boys (and girls, including my little sister Alison, who is just a few years older than Jericho).

He used to ask, "I watch Buzz and Woody?" and would get out his toys (many gleaned from the thirty or so Burger King kids meals we had to endure as a family just to collect the entire set) and would sit all the way through the movie, playing contentedly with all the movie characters.

I used to get soooo much done around the house during showings of that movie! Piles of laundry washed and folded, bathrooms scrubbed to a shine, dinner in the crock pot, and sometimes I even managed to make bread dough. From scratch.

And if you've ever made bread dough from scratch, that's really saying something, because as any mom knows, you commit yourself to a project like that at the wrong time, and you've a surefire recipe for disaster: Toddler + sticky bread dough all over hands and wrists = gleeful toddler in mama's bathroom hallway squeezing an entire tube of toothpaste onto and into the carpeting while you scrub furiously, in futility at the kitchen sink.

Fast forward about a decade, and now we find Judah begging to watch these same movies.

All day long lately, he'll ask, "I watch Toy Story, mama?"

And just like brother before him, while he waits for those blasted old-school Video tapes to rewind, I find myself yelling the oddest things across the room. Things like, "No, Judah...don't put your cars in the VCR!" (With big brother, it was toast.)

And like his brother before him, Judah would watch them over and over all day long if I let him.

Except that he doesn't sit still for long (or ever) like big brother used to.

Here he is training to be the next Beckham, kicking the 'socco bow' a little too close to mama's camera for her liking, while Toy Story plays in the background. He's planning ahead, you see, all that "To Infinity...and Beyond" stuff having already rubbed off on him.



Because little brother has taken such a liking to Toy Story and Toy Story 2, Jericho went to bat on his behalf, and wheedled and pleaded with us to get a box of his old toys down from their shelf in the garage the other day. "Judah really wants those toys down...it's just not right to watch those movies without the toys when they're all just sitting up there in the garage waiting to be played with...C'mon, mom...please?"

How could I possibly say 'no' to that (especially when we all know how much Jessie and the Prospector hate being closed up in the dark)?

Even if I did know who really wanted those toys down...



...and sure enough, I found him in Judah's room reliving his childhood not long after they came inside.

Judah recognized the characters, and was immediately entranced, "Toy Stow-we!" And later, "Take pit-tcher Cowboy, mama" he said proudly (and vainly, meaning he wanted the picture of him being a cowboy).



Judah's attachment to these toys is slightly different from his brothers.

Jericho was a purist when it came to putting Mr. & Mrs. PotatoHead's features on properly.

And though he liked Buzz, he was a Woody the Cowboy fan all the way. We had quite a crisis on our hands one day when he lost his first, beloved Woody's hat somewhere between our Bible Study and my chiropractic visit. We retraced our steps, to no avail. Jericho was heartbroken, but lucky for him his birthday was just around the corner, and the cowboy dolls were replaced in spades.

Judah likes Woody well enough. But he loves doing the whole Picasso thing to poor Mr. & Mrs. Potato Head. And his favorite character?



"Fuzz Light-Hay-Oh"



"To In-fifthy and BEYOOOOOND!"

Then, only a day or two later, while he was briefly playing with all the Toy Story toys and watching the movie, I hear him call out, "Mama...wook, I go potty!"

I looked into the living area and saw this:



(and though you can't see it in the photo, and he'll no doubt thank me for that fact in years to come, his bum was uncovered inside the bucket

"NOOOOOooooooo" I shrieked.

And like any good blog mom, grabbed my camera and ran to avert disaster (after first taking a photo).

I'm pretty sure my shrieking ruined him on the whole concept of potty training for at least the next year or so, though. *sigh*

He's still not quite got the concept down of telling me he needs to go before the fact, and, um, lets just say that (thankfully) everything was contained in the diaper.

Notice how Picasso Potatohead's angry eyes are bugging out in the corner of the photo? Back when Jericho was about 5, we were on a family road trip, and Jericho was sitting in the backseat of our truck feeling kind of woozy after drinking a big old bottle of cranberry juice on an empty stomach, and got sick in the exact same bucket.

Of course, it was thoroughly cleaned out back then, too...but since this little episode...just like ol' Woody sang about in Toy Story, "strange things are happenin' to me...straaaaaa-ange things..." Toys are showing up in strange places lately. My shoes, my purse...

Let me just say that if someone suddenly posts a picture of a headless Barbie doll drinking darjeeling on my blog...send for reinforcements!