Oh, Bucky will be sooooo thrilled. You just KNOW it.

Who names someone Bunky??? Fortunately, she is off the binky. That would be weird.

Our potty (same one Leta has) sat in our family room for many months, also used as a mini-recliner. Congrats. Toddlerhood is a long strange trip.

cracking me up....

Bucky 4 eyes will be thrilled. And for some reason a "Ball Breaking Bunky" sounds like it could hurt.

Bucky's bunky is shut? Wow. Anybody else feel the gravitational disturbance?

Word of advice from a sage mom who is a whole month ahead of you in the potty training process (please note sarcasm)ditch the trainer potty ASAP and go straight to the "big girl potty" - cleaning the "recliner" sux sweaty goat balls. We have the same portable potty and that little handy cup inside just screams "2 year old, pick me up and DUMP ME ON THE FLOOR, but wait...not until I'm full of pee pee."

Supreme Chancellor Palpatine - that's the best!

My mom tried to teach us correct names for parts but my sister couldn't say vagina and called it "China" instead. We still can't talk about China - whether country or teacups - without giggling. So I would say good call on "bunky."

Good luck with all your potty adventures!

Of course "Snuffleupagus" leads me to ask is Jon that Hairy?

A friend of mine's daughter also used the potty as a chair, so much so that when they decided to actively potty-train her, they had to buy another one because she didnt want to go potty in her chair.

It's great that you're demystifying the whole potty-training process.

Or should I say, de-bunking the myths about potty-training?

We did the potty train in 24 hours method. Sort of like a Marine corp. drill with gallons of juice and Koolaid and lots of urine. Worked great. Our kids are teens now and the experience has had no obvious negative effects. You teach the child to enjoy being dry.

I opted to potty train our daughter. On day 1 of the exercise Erin wee'd on the floor 18 times.

My prayers are with you and your family, and your floorboards and carpet.

I taught my son to use the biological terms for all the parts because that's how I was raised. There was a newspaper article about a young girl who was molested and the molester was not convicted because she could only say he touched her "smile".

I've only potty trained a boy... I hear girls are harder though.

I would like to officially nominate this entry The Post With the Best Run-on Sentence Ever.

Duly nominated.

I dread the potty train. Not that I should, as I don't have kids and may never have kids, but it seems an activity rife with possible consequences. Like chopped off limbs in a future freezer. Though I suppose every parenting activity could conceivably end in such a way. Please excuse me while I go sew my vagina shut.

Penis or vagina. That's what we call it. Because we are boring and unoriginal like that. Clinical, really.

Is it wrong for me to get quite a bit of amusement reading what everyone else calls theirs?

BWAH! Great post.

Leta has the right idea, though. My toilet is more comfortable than any damn La-Z-Boy! That must be why I can easily spend upwards of an hour sitting there, reading. Or just thinking. Or twiddling my thumbs. Man, I'm sad.

I can hardly stand how much you make me laugh. Fortunately, I'm pretty tough.

I WANT A POTTY IN FRONT OF THE TV, TOO!!!

We called my son's wanker a "pee-pee" (genius, I know) and he's grown up to be a totally normal 13-year-old. Minus, you know, the arrests. And that pesky target practice from the watch tower and all.

I think Bunky sounds better than vagina. My mom called it a hoosie, I always thought that sounded dumb.

When the time comes to really motivate her, here are a couple of suggestions:

My older son (he's 3) would pee on the potty, but not poo. It scared him.I bought him the Diego rescue centre. Once he went, he saw it wasn't bad, and has gone on the toilet ever since.

My friend's daughter is the same in regards to the no pooping policy. She's also similar in temperament to Leta :) Whenever she wants her daughter to do something (like poop, or maybe go for a NAP that she's fighting), she calls "Dora" (me) and when Dora suggests something, she does it gladly.

I've even been known to say "Vamonos!"

Oh, and we have "pee-pee's", and "hoo-hoo's" in our house :)

I am so thoroughly confused now.. my mom's euphemism for penis is bucky.. I'm kind of digging Bucky for penis, Bunky for vagina.. they kind of go together. Sounds like one of those yuppie couples who went to Yale or Brown and played lacrosse and pledged sororities..

Anyhow, I like bunky.. it's kicky. Like a vagina with a sassy little beret.

TheGirlWho

It takes a lot just to be able to comment here!

All I wanted to say really was to not worry too much about the naming of parts.
When my daughter was three and my son had just turned one she realized they looked different in the bath tub. She came running out to me saying that Jacob had a chubby tail and she didn't. She was hysterical and shrieking it, echoing throughout the eight story apartment building. We have always taught the correct names of parts so this "chubby tail" was a creation all her own.
It stuck. We have officially adopted the name because it was so cute at the time and its adorable to hear my youngest (yes, I bred, I have three!) say it.
If you ever find yourself with a boy, feel free to use it if you want to.
That is all.

Ahh, one day they sit on the potty for the first time and before you know it they're in panties and getting their first wedgie. Where does the time go?

I am so bad at this parenting stuff. I don't think I'm going to be able to use a nickname let alone remember to refer to genitalia at all. My thought process is SO without ... um thought. I'm going to have a tough enough time saying the WORD panties. The show and tell thing, I can do. Perhaps they're hope for my kidlet yet.

Leta sitting on her potty in the middle of the living room reminds me of a hilarious/horrible experience: I was visiting my sister-in-law and newest little nephew over a year ago. She and my husband and I were chit-chatting in the dining room, where there happened to be a training potty sitting in the corner (why???). My niece (she was 4 at the time and potty trained) came in, dropped her drawers, and took THE BIGGEST DUMP EVER right in front of us in the potty in the dining room. My SIL acted like it was nothing, took her to the bathroom to wipe her and clean out the potty after she finished, leaving my husband and me staring at each other speechless and fascinated and horrified.

Since I work with two and three year olds all day, I spend a lot of time in the bathroom (do you remember those little toilets all in a row?) And when you're teaching a large group of children how to use the toilet, you pretty much just have to suck it up and use all of the technical terms for things.

I mean, if a little girl asks me to help her wipe her "poo-non-ay," and another one "her la-la," it could become very confusing very quickly.

And though I call it a vagina to a three year old, I still can't call it one to my own age group. No, not po-po like the cops...po-po like my wa-yi-nah!

It's nice to see you and Jon addressing The Naming of Parts. Parts were certainly not named in my household. In second grade someone told me a boy's thing was called a "Fitzgerald," and I believed them. It gives new meaning to The Great Gatsby, don't you think?

I remember one particularly humiliating bathroom moment when I had realized that poo-poo and pee-pee were the end result of eating and drinking and I pointed to my turds in the toilet and asked Mom, "Is that what we eat?" But she misunderstood and screeched "Oh my God NO! Don't touch it!" I still don't get how she interpreted that I wanted to ingest my poo.

Dr. Bailey on Grey's Anatomy calls her vagina a vuh-jay-jay as in: "O'Malley! Quit looking at my vuh-jay-jay!" when she delivered her baby!

As a little girl, my daughter called her vagina a pik-pik, allegedly the Tagalog word for vagina (we lived in the tropics with lots of filipino nannies). I was so happy she did because once we were at the Mall of America Aquarium, which has an overhead tank with sharks swimming in it, and my daughter looks up and yells: look Mom, you can see their pik-piks!

At thirteen, she refuses to call body parts by any name unless she is required to do so in health class. I know she must have died a thousand deaths having to write the word "testes" on the "label the male reproductive system" assignment.

Gah. I keep forgetting that HTML is turned off.

"this picture of GIANT VAGINAS": http://tinyurl.com/z9klz

My husband,when questioned by our then 3 year old daughter (and totally unprepared), said that being a girl, that part of her anatomy was called her "Shirley Temple".

Ack!

Well Bucky as your girlfriend I can confirm to Dooce and everyone else that you are, in fact, a vagina. And dont worry Squirl, I am totally proud of her.

Last night at the grocery store when I put my cold hands on her stomach I can promise you all she acted like a big vagina as she tried to get away.

Now Im going to start calling her My sweet Bucky bunky vagina monkey honey baby sugar pie.

That is such a cute picture!

And thank you and my fellow commentors for the smile :-)

Now if you could just get her to use it for it's actual purpose you'd be in business!!

Her "Wallace"? Oh, my.

We have a four-year-old Pembroke Welsh Corgi named Wallace, so "her Wallace" suggests (to me) a Napoleonic personality, a ferocious appetite, and a double coat of fur. Sheesh...gotta shake this out of my mind now...

One more thing...the male body part has not been named in our house yet but Kayla did ask her dad about it when she was two. She was lying on the bed with him (clad only in underpants) and she poked him in the penis and asked him what he had in his pants. "Is it poop?" she asked in all seriousness. I think her dad was too shocked to say anything before he busted out laughing. We have yet to resolve that question for Kayla.

Too, too cute!!! Girls are so easy like that. It's the boys that want to poop in their pants till they are 5.

Bucky finally gets the recognition she deserves! Yay!

As for the euphemism "bunky", it also makes me laugh because my fifth grade teacher's name was Bunky Sorochak. Mr. Sorochak was an extremely overweight middle aged man, who had skin tags on his eyelids. Don't ask me why I remember that, but I do. I mean, this was about fifteen years ago, but I remember those skin tags. And he used to keep Snickers and Reese's Peanut Butter cups in his desk drawer, and when we would get a perfect score on a test or homework, he would toss us piece of candy. And not the Halloween snack size - but the FULL. SIZE. CANDY BAR! This man was awesome. Sadly, Bunky Sorochak ended up coming down with Type 2 Diabetes and had to quit teaching, and a few years after I had him as my teacher, he lost a leg. So Bunky had to hop around on crutches, until he died a few years later. Strangely, after he was a teacher, he became mayor of the town I lived in, and there was this huge sign as you entered the town that said "Kingston, PA - HOME OF BUNKY!" So now, everytime I think of my childhood home, I will think of vaginas. Well, for any northeast PA town, that isn't that strange of a correlation.

So now instead of thinking of an old gray haired lady in a muu-muu you can think of a fat, sweaty elementary school teacher turned mayor, with skin tags on his eyelids and a wooden leg! Yeah!

You do have to be careful about this decision. My step daughter is 10 now, but up until last summer she refused to call her parts anything other than 'fufu'. I don't recall what term she had for boy parts. Her mom calls it a fufu and that was what she was used to. She knew the correct terminology, but was literally too afraid to use it. I'd hate for my daughter to grow up being afraid to call her vagina a vagina.

I think this is one of your best posts in awhile. Great writing.

That is so freaking cute. Dooce, she really is adorable.

Hehehe. Another picture of Leta that I dragged my boyfriend in to see. I think he's getting concerned. And hurrah! A new blog. I am enjoying Bucky Four Eyes.

BG

My only recommendation is to periodically remember to actually use the word vagina when referring to either your or Leta's bunky. We're very British around here and refer genetalia and heinies as bits [and pieces] and bums. Early on I was very conscientious about using bits and vagina interchangably and then I kind of fell off that wagon. Recently I thought it was time for a review and when I asked my oldest, "What else are your bits called?" she muttered "Ummmmmm..." while turning her eyes toward the sky as though I was asking her four and a half year old brain to perform higher math. Clearly I haven't kept up with the vagina speak.

I just have to add though that I think vagina is a stupid word. Labia? Clitoris? Eyeroll. They all suck (and don't even get me started on "penis" and "testicles). My two year old agrees because when I asked her recently if she could say "vagina" while she was enthusiastically grabbing herself and screaming "Bits! Bits! BITS!!!" during a diaper change, she firmly replied, "NO!" See? Stupid.

Leta is definitely on to something with the taking the potty to the grocery store.
When my kids were little I kept one in the minivan/suv for when we were out and about. Great for parks or long trips. Probably pouring the pee out in ditches etc. was not the greatest, but when toddlers got to pee they got to pee.
Just visited Blurbomat and am still amused you have another croc wearer (besides Leta) in your home.

What? Bucky is "outspoken"? I don't believe it! :-) Ahh, yes, potty training... good times. Don't worry, you'll eventually cave and resort to bribing her with M&Ms. It's what all good moms do.

Damn, I wish *I* had a toilet in front of the TV...

And Bunky is so cute. I have no idea what I called it as a child...I'll have to ask my mom what she taught my sister and I.

This reminds me of "High Anxiety" with Mel Brooks. Ya'll should check it out. He refers to the vagina as a "woo-woo". Classic movie.

My cousin had a cat named Bunky.

Appropriate.

:-)

Bucky? Rilly? (giggle) Brilliant.

Are you sure you don't want Leta to call it a "taco box"?

hahaha! This post was endlessly entertaining!
LOVE the idea of bunky and snuffleupagus! And hey, at least she enjoys her potty! Yay Leta!! Another milestone, almost reached! =)

In our house...momma has a "flower", daddy has a "stinger"! How fun was that on the second day of pre-school when the teacher took me aside and said what is your son refering to when he says STINGER! NICE!

A word of note about the potty you have for Leta...I had the same one and found that the hole wasn't quite big enough when my little one had to drop a deuce and it kinda ended up all over the seat instead of inside. Kinda gross. GOOD LUCK!

Haha, love it! My parents have a great picture of my sister when she was little actually using her potty and "reading" a book, outside in the yard.

Go with the euphemisms, after all she's growing up in a place where people "use the bathroom" (unless, of course, you all really shit in the bath).

Speaking of parts ... "Supreme Chancellor Palpatine"? Someone's geek parts are showing.

when i was growing up in poland, they used to sit all of us in daycare on our little plastic potties...for hours, so we'd get the hang of it (and the daycare ladies could have their tea and doughnuts). my parents have pictures of that, just to make me feel super special.

It's always bothered me, and I may be the only one, how we say "penis" appropriately, but not vagina.

When people tell children to call a girl's parts "vagina" do they know that really only refers to the opening and vaginal canal itself? A girl doesn't urinate with her vagina, and the whole area is called a "vulva", not a "vagina".

It's always bothered me when people say they teach their children the clinical terms "penis" and "vagina", when that's not even accurate!

I think it's hilarious, a potty chair in the living room! Every house should have one! ha!

My son did the exact same thing when I was potty training him. The little potty was a rather permanent fixture in our family room for longer than I care to admit... and we taught our son the proper names for everything as well but he couldn't say vagina to save his little life. It took me a couple days to figure out what "mountain China" was - I see another commenter had a similar experience, too funny.

there is a band named bunky--there you go: picture your vagina playing a musical instrument instead of making a pot roast

also, love the self portrait on flickr with the fabulous filigree earrings. think it should be on your "about me" page here at dooce.com

I have been waiting to share embarrassing potty stories about my husband and his family told to me by my mother in law... and hooray today is the day!!!

My husband has a sister who is almost a year younger than him. His sister wanted to do EVERYTHING he did... including using the big potty. So my husband being the caring brother he is taught her to stand up to pee... well obviously this didn't quite work out how either of them expected since his sister had a bunky. So my husband taught her to stand on top of the potty. Well the pee would still run down her legs and on to the floor...so his solution.... have her stand on the seat with one foot hanging over the inside of the tolet... so when the pee ran down her leg it would run IN the toliet... my mother in law told me it took her months to teach my sister in law to pee sitting down.

Then there was the time my mother in law found out that my husband's Grandma taught my husband how to pee on a tree... she was standing in line at the bank and noticed that her shoes felt wet... she looked over and there was her son peeing on the fake tree.

I promised my dear husband I wouldn't tell a single soul those stories... I kept my promise... I didn't tell one person... I told the whole internet.

In our house, boys had a "peanut" and our girl parts were referred to as "down there." Like this mysterious, dark, faraway place! No wonder why I'm so screwed up. :^)

I'm a social worker for Early Headstart, and I do home visits with families that have children 0-3. I don't have children, yet, but my experiences have caused me to dread potty-training (or "toilet-learning" as we are instructed to call it!).

For reasons I'm no longer completely clear on, other than having good intentions, my now-ex and I taught our son and daughter (6 and 4) the proper names: i.e, penis, vagina, heck, even labia.

Last summer I was wheeling my daughter Bea over to daycare in her wagon.

"Liam has a penis, right Dad?" says Bea.
"Yep."
"Mommy has a vagina."
"Yes again."
"Liam has a penis."
"That's right Bea. Liam has a penis. And what do you have?"

At this point I did not notice that we had entered a small, very echo-ey courtyard just off the main sidewalk. It was about 8 am and the neighbourhood was starting to wake up. Grannies were milling.

"I have LABIA!!!" she shouts. The words reverberate like she'd just belted it out at the Grand Canyon. A few feet away from me, some poor old gal practically jumps right out of her orthapedic shoes AND has a heart attack.

"Yep," I say, "You've got labia, Bea. Very good."

I was kinda hopin' that you'd called it "binky" -- only because I use to work with an insane person who decided that she wanted everyone to call her by the name her toddler aged nieces called her. We still get mail for her at the office and it's been ten years since she finally had the decency to quit. About 5 years ago, the name on the mail was changed to Binky. Who changes the name but not the address? Insane.

Anyway - our friend's kid also did the potty as barka lounger -- only she'd sit sans pants -- not go, but use it as another reason to take off her pants.

The picture is adorable but I can't help but feel that poor lil Leta is getting the wrong idea about the use of the potty. ;)

My children speak french and english. We've chosen the french words....kiki for penis and foufounette shortened to foufou for vagina. Fortunately I am the only girl in the house so rarely have to say the word foufou out loud.

I feel so boring and lame. We call ours penis and vagina around our two boys. Actually, our oldest one doesn't consider girls has having parts other than a booty.

By the way, my 3 year old just looked at the picture of Leta and wondered who it was sitting on his potty, since it's the exact same one.

haha...too funny...i don't remember being potty trained. and we didn't have nicknames for those 'parts'. we just didn't think about them. strange, huh?

Hee! Sugapie said, "drop a deuce"!
See, I find that funny cause this is dooce.com... you know what, I should probably just shut up now. I'm trying to age my sense of humor from 12-year-old boy. It's not working.

I can tell from that picture that Leta will be taller than me by the time she's 10 years old, and I need to start coming to terms with that now.

For my imaginary future kids, it will have to be be 'Supreme Chancellor Palpatine' and 'Snuffleupagus'. I love the formality of the first name mixed with that '70s Puff the Magic Dragon feel of the second. I hope they call a muppet that, someday.

That was Muffin Man's favorite spot for potty sitting, also. Same make of potty, too.

i grew up with all the proper names for things, but my ex-boyfriend named my vagina nana, and it kind of stuck. to me it sounds soft, feminine, like everything you would want in a vagina.
This blogg and the commenters are cracking me up! i'm in med school so this is a excellent source of procrastination material. Plus, after you've stuck your fingers in vaginas and palpated penises for educational purposes, nanas and peppers just sound so much better.

I taught my kids the proper words for their body parts, and then they went off to school and picked up the words "weenie" and "boobs" anyway.

*facepalm*

Sorry, not on board with naming body parts anything other than their parts.

I agree that bunky IS cute, and you absoloutly have the right to teach your daughter what you want her to call her parts and boy bits as well (And kudos also for teaching her the proper terms) but meh...

My problem was not only didn't I have cute names to call my parts...(Penis is SO much easier than Vagina or vulva) but for some reason vagina was hard for me to say. Not physically, but embarassedly. Luckly for us, our daughter has not that problem.

Good luck with the potty training. Our very stubborn daughter refused to learn until just before she turned 4. Then again, I didn't see the point in forcing her. *grins* I let Auntie Mel Mel and Grandma Mary do THAT!!!

So she's calling it "bucky", eh? I have to admit, when I first read that, I immediately thought, "Bucky the Beaver!" And boy did that thought go into the gutter.

My son is a few months younger than Leta, and we just started potty training him. We settled on calling his boy parts "pee-pee" and "bottom", which are nice all-purpose androgynous names.

But I must admit...my husband and I had a lot of fun trying to decide on what to tell my son to call the little soldier. At the top of the (absolutely ludicrous) list: "Napoleon", "proud jutting manhood" and "hot beef injection."

"Correct anatomical designations" come with their own set of problems, as illustrated by this blog entry: http://thebigyellowhouse.blogspot.com/2005/10/its-very-very-fragile.html. I am DREADING potty training...

I don't need to have kids... I can live it all through blogs like this. :)

Although I don't remember naming any parts until I got older, many of my friends now call a penise "batch", "junk" or "stuff". And vaginas are "jo-jines" or, thanks to my most recent ex boyfriend "happy fun land". I guess I don't suggest that's a good term to start with. And no, that's not why he's my ex although that should probably be enough right there.

My mom likes to tell everyone that when I was being potty trained and would have issues "going" that I would scream from the bathroom "Prunes! I need prunes!" Strange that they never approached me about using that in any advertising campaign...

Thanks mom.

I applaud your approach to potty training!

I'm starting to potty train my son... well, actually I'm at the stage where I've got a couple of potty seats (one upstairs, one downstairs), I'm reading material every day, and weeping silently at night with the fear that somehow I'm going to do it wrong or backwards. It was so much easier house training my dog.

Good luck. Please keep posting potty training steps so I can try what you try.

Maaaaaaaaaaaaatttttttlooooooooooooock!

My mom is korean, and my dad speaks polish fluently, so my siblings and I were trained using the korean word for us girls and the polish word for the guys. to this day my sisters and I still giggle when we hear "joanie love chachi" I can't spell it but the polish word for penis is kun-dinghy. Hee hee.

This also means we learned to swear in 4 different languages (my dad speaks german as well), and more importantly order beer in 4 different languages.

When I was little the name for my girl part was "Po Po" as in "poe poe." It wasn't until later in life when I learned that here in South Carolina (and possibly other places), people refer to the police as the "po po." Everytime I hear someone say it I immediately feel weird and feel the need to crawl into a corner.

I don't remember having any special names for the equipment. Nor do I remember my parents ever using the real names either. Come to think of it, if my dad said the word vagina I'd probably run out of the room screaming. And I'm 30.

My grandma called a butt a "po-po" though. I remember that.

When Leta gets a better grasp on the language in a few years, why not call all the subject area private parts, shortened to privates? Bum also works although it tends to mean the back side. I have an objection to vagina because that means the part on the inside - the tube part. The part on the outside has many parts but the whole area is the vulva. I'm thinking "private parts" works for everything AND indicates how they should be kept - private. Just a thought.

I am TOTALLY voting for Supreme Chancellor Palpatine! If Leta ever dates a Star Wars freak he will be OH SO GRATEFUL. LOL!!

I am going to suggest it to my own Star Wars freak here at home. However, I will most definitely not mention the idea of going potty in front of the TV. He might take it seriously.

I love how serious she looks on the picture. If you don't tell her how insanely cute she is, we'll do!

That is so unbelievably, astonishingly, painfully, cute I can't stand it.

I'm sorry but all I can think of is Bucky the Beaver.

I'd already sprayed my caramel latte all across the computer screen over the onslaught of Snuffleupagus, Supreme Chancellor Palpatine and Grandma Bunky, and then you hit me with Bucky.

My very serious, very dry-humored manager's nickname (not that he's aware of it) is Bucky. Now think of the images I'll have every time I see him. God, I'll never have a straight face in a team meeting again!

Oh, and my parents didn't refer to those body parts at all. If it hadn't been for "Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret," I'd probably still be trying to figure that stuff out on my own.

My son, on the other hand, will need an early education, since he's already got 4 or 5 serious girlfriends at the tender age of 1. We're wondering if we should start packing condoms in his diaper bag for daycare.

Too funny! When my daughter was asking about body parts when she was little, my husband was baffled as to what to tell her. I told him to tell her the right names for things. She has adopted "pee thang" all on her own though.

Do not take Leta to go play Utah's favorite feminine pasttime...

Lord know what will happen when someone yells "BUNKO!"

Fucking great. "Bunky" was my Dad's nickname for me when I was little and he still calls me that sometimes. Awesome.

Just to let you know that this morning I woke up with the word "snuffleupagus" repeating over and over in my head. THANKS.

What, no 'hoo-ha' nicknames?
I knew a girl who called hers a 'muh-nine-uh'.
I told the girls the real names for their girly bits, but then I also started calling it their choo-choo as well.
Something about saying, in a perfectly calm and sane way, the word 'vagina' to a three-year-old just makes me utterly uncomfortable. And to say it over and over again? Naaah.

bunky? cute.

my mother in law calls it shame-shame. shame shame? how about proud proud?

I call it her pe-gina (penis and pegina) although I don't call daddy's thingy a penis, it's a turkey. go figure.

I used to teach preschool and take it from me...keep it simple. Pee-Pee is a nice one (mommy's pee-pee, daddy's pee-pee, gotta go pee-pee) and allows them to m