During one of our recent trips to IKEA to outfit our new house in the latest and greatest in window coverings we succumbed to an impulse buy. IKEA makes those impulse buys so easy. I see a brightly colored dish and I just have to have it. Or I see the brightly colored napkins and I have to buy three packs. Or the brightly colored children’s plastic plates and cups.

Holy crap, I’m like a little bird; I’m attracted to all thing brightly colored.

Anyway, back to my impulse buy.

The King and I decided to fork over $3.99 for a little IKEA toilet for Babboo. It wasn’t that Babboo seemed ready to be potty trained. The kid just turned two. And it wasn’t that we were ready to being potty training. Heck, I hadn’t even thought about it. All I knew was that this little IKEA potty was $3.99 and it would look so cute in Babboo’s new bathroom.

(I told you Babboo’s bedroom in the new house has its own bathroom, right? Teenage Isabel is so jealous.)

We bought it. Took it home. Placed in it the bathroom and forgot about it. Ever now and again I’d ask Babboo if he wanted to use his potty and he’d ignore me. After a while he decided he liked using it as a little seat. He’d carry it around from room to room and sit on it while he read a book or watched something on my iPod.

After a little more time Babboo decided he would sit on the potty without his diaper on. The King and I would ask him if he needed to pee and again, he would just ignore our questioning. But dude, he was sitting on the potty. We seemed to be moving in the right direction. Whatever that direction might be.

And then something magical happened….one night, while sitting on the potty while I got his tub ready, he stood up from his potty and there was actually something in it!

Holy crap, the kid used his potty.

Babboo was just as surprised and shocked as I was. We both began to sing and dance around.

“Hooray for potty!”

We ran to tell daddy. I called my mom.

This was new territory and I admit to being very nervous. I just wasn’t ready for potty-training. The next morning I hoped on the interweb and looked up how to potty-train your kid. Mostly what I learned was that kids were typically about three when they were ready. Babboo is about nine months shy of being three. I also read of sticker charts and rewards systems. Um yeah, I had no chart. And no desire to reward potty-time with candy. (Mostly because having candy in the house just means I’ll eat it.) I read of buying big-boy-underwear and daddy’s teaching their little boys how to use the potty.

Right. None of this was happening at our house. All we were doing was letting our kid basically use his $3.99 IKEA potty as a chair.

This all happened a month ago.

I haven’t talked about this really to anyone, until right now, but dude, Babboo totally potty-trained himself. Anytime I sit him on his potty (with a book, mind you) he uses it. He won’t get up until he does his business. And then we both do a little dance and run off to tell The King.

There were no sticker charts, no candy rewards, no Thomas the Train underpants. While some kids walk at nine months and others start talking at six months, my kid potty trained himself.

And let’s be honest, I’ll take my kid potty training himself over walking early any day of the week.

(Full disclosure dictates that I tell you Babboo won’t use the potty at school. It’s one of those miniature toilets that look like a regular toilet, only smaller. I think it freaks him out. His teachers tell me he’s never used it once. I think they just don’t believe me when I tell him that Babboo’s using his potty at home exclusively. I’m fine with him not using the school’s potty. Dude, that thing is covered in germs. I’d just assume he stayed away from it.)

(I still can’t get over MissZoot’s post about NOT USING THE TOILET SEAT COVERS IN PUBLIC BATHROOMS!)