Toddlers, on the whole, are really lovely. They can be bad tempered, it's true, and they can be highly stubborn, but on the other hand, they are fascinating to watch, learn incredibly quickly and very sweet. It's a great age to deal with, in general. The one thing I could do without, though, is the vast quantity of time spent discussing going to the toilet. Yes, that's right, potty training - everyone's favourite. I can accept the whole discussion explaining that you need to learn to go to the potty before you make wee or poo and so on, but sitting with a toddler while she's on the potty & hearing her give you progress reports about where the poo is precisely & what progress she's having pushing it out, isn't really what I'd put at the top of my "must do" list for the day. Particularly when the incident occurs in the middle of eating lunch. And when there's really no poo anyway. Still, the advantage of waiting until they are almost three to really potty train intensively is that they are quite quick to catch on to the whole thing, and have pretty good control. Beats trying with an 18 month old, where you have to put them on the pot every 15 minutes, all day long. And hey, it's still better than work...