Wal-mart - it's not just for grocery shopping any more!

This picture has nothing to do with this post.
At all.  I just think he's adorable. 

Potty training Zachary was the single most painful year and a half long experience of my life, so I'll admit, when it was time to potty train Cooper I put it off for far too long.

Finally, I decided I was going to have to just do it, so as I put him to bed, I prepped Cooper (and myself) the day before I was going to start.  "Cooper, you are getting to be such a big boy!  Do you know how Zachary wears underpants, and Daddy wears underpants and Mama wears underpants and not diapers?  Well, starting tomorrow you get to wear underpants too!  You get to go pee and poop in the potty!  Isn't that wonderful?"

The next morning when I went in to get him out of bed, he had taken off his diaper, put on underwear, and that was that.  Boom.  Totally potty trained.  I guess he was ready, huh?

Anyway, it was blessedly easy, which I'll have to say I think I deserved after the train wreck that was potty training Zachary, but having small children who are potty trained is not without it's own particular brand of challenges.

The greatest of these challenges is, of course, having a potty plan for when you are not at home.  Since I am a creature of habit, I go to the same places over and over and I have a potty plan for them all.  Except one.  Zachary's Tae Kwon Do class has a bathroom, but the setup is such that if a class is in session you have to walk through the middle of the class, thereby interrupting everyone's concentration, and then you have to do it again on the way back to your seat.  But class is only an hour, and I always make sure Cooper goes to the bathroom right before we leave for class.  It's only an hour, right?

So one day a few weeks back we were sitting at Tae Kwon Do, watching Zachary's class, when Cooper leaned over to me and said "Mama, I have to poop!" Oh great.  The class was in the middle of forms, which requires some concentration, so I asked him "Can you wait till we get home?"  "No Mama, I need to poop now!"

Ok then.  I made a split second decision that I would take him to Wal-Mart, which is just across the street, so he could use the bathroom there instead of interrupting the class twice.  We went, and he went, and everything worked out just fine.

Until the next time we were sitting in class, a few minutes in, and Cooper said to me "Mama, I need to poop.  Can us go to Moo-mart?" (Moo-mart is what he calls Wal-Mart because, hello! we do what Mickey Mouse does!)  After asking some questions I determined it was pretty urgent, so off to Moo... I mean Wal-Mart we went.

Now every time we are in the general vicinity of Wal-Mart, he decides he needs to go there to poop.  When I told him the other day to get his shoes on because we needed to go to Wal-Mart so we could get some groceries, he replied "YAY! AND US TAN POOP THERE, TOO!"

Um, yeah, kid, I guess we can.