Time to Pee! by Mo Willems

Time to Pee! by Mo Willems

Rating: 4 stars

When we potty trained our first child--or, really, when she potty-trained herself--we bought three or four books to help her understand what she was going to do.  We talked about it at length.  If there had been a movie, I would have sat with her and watched it, pausing it when I had something to add.  Which would have been a lot.

My sister took it one step further.  She potty-trained her twins girls, who are four months older than Lorelei, she WROTE a super long, super detailed book about what they were to do when they "got that funny feeling."  It was practically a chapter book!  With TONS of words.  Way too many words.  I mean, a LOT of words.

She and I recently potty-trained our cabooses--our last kids.  (Her fourth child is just six weeks older than my third; both are about 2 1/2.)  I think we had the same approach, quite different than the first time: "Hey, kid, here's the potty.  You know what to do, right?"

Okay, I am exaggerating.  But it was about the same amount of words as Mo Willems uses in his book, which is simply an explanation with cute illustrations about what you should do when you "get that funny feeling."  With the help of a lot of mice holding up a lot of signs, he tells kids what to do.  My favorite page is "Boys can stand; girls should sit."  That gets a lot of questions in my house.

Anyway, we checked this book out again a few weeks AFTER Kiefer started wearing underwear.  Oops.  We are planning an enormous celebration of the end of an era.  The End of Diapers!  After nearly 7 years of changing them, it is worthy of a celebration!

Thank you for using the toilet, Kiefer!