Guest Dad Joe Burris writes today about how for a family guy, the toilet inevitably becomes "the potty":

A couple of weeks ago, my wife and I were visiting a department store when she decided to try on a garment.

“Okay,” I said, while walking out of the store, “I got to go to the potty.”

I stood momentarily red faced, wondering if any of the other customers in the store had heard me.

Potty -- now there’s a word you rarely hear from anyone who doesn’t have kids. I scarcely uttered it before we had any. Now, in nearly 13 years of parenting, it has become one of the most used in my vocabulary.

I have had some of the most memorable experiences taking my kids to the potty. I’ve learned that there are many filling stations just off Interstate 95 in North Carolina that have some of the most disgusting looking bathrooms I’ve ever seen. But when your kid’s got to go, you’ve got to stop.

I still recall the first time I took my older daughter Nyaniso (now 12) to a crowded men’s room. And I remember taking my younger Onalenna (now 3) to an empty ladies’ room; the receptionist at the pediatrician’s office gave me the ladies’ key, and it was too late to return for the other.

A while back, Onalenna struggled with me closing myself off from her and the rest of the world when I went to the bathroom.

“Daddy, what are you doing in there?”

“I’m going potty, Sweetie.”

“Can I come in with you?”

“Er, are you sure about that?”

Unbeknownst to me, Onalenna often observed my bathroom traits. And now when she goes, she takes reading materials with her. Most are books that we’ve read to her at nighttime; she’s heard them so often that she now recites them. Sometimes she takes magazines or other periodicals.

The thing is, the bathroom has become, for her, best reading room outside of the local library. She’ll go in and sit and sit and sit and sit and sit.

At times, you would think she’s thumbing through the Christmas edition of “War and Peace.”

“Sweetie, what are you doing in there?”

“I’m reading on the potty.”

Before we had kids, I worried about potty training, having heard of trying accounts from friends. As it turns out, both of our children transitioned well from diapers. Yet both have had their share of difficult moments during potty time, and it is amazing how much they recall.

Last year, while we were seated in a doctor’s office, Onalenna walked over to a baby crying frantically nearby.

“Aww, poor baby,” she said. “Are you constipated?”