Potty Training

Potty Training!

Frankly, I dreaded potty training.  I am of the mindset that until she is ready it is really just a way to torture mommy to have to clean up pee if I forget to remind her to go every hour on the hour.  So, I avoided it. 

Finally, a friend let me borrow a "Princess Potty" - a little training potty and I just put it in the bathroom.  She would sit on it, play with it (it was clean) and started asking questions.  So then I thought, ok, maybe we are actually ready!

Over the summer for a few days I pumped her FULL of juice then we went outside to play.  I was having a hard time explaining what the goal was (ya know, when your body makes water outta, well, there and it needs to go in the potty...ugh, never mind).  Finally after many "mommy, why is there water running down my leg!" moments she was in the right place at the right time.  We had treats, we called daddy, we called Grandma - it was a BIG deal.  And she finally understood the end goal.

We did the same thing for the next few days.  And pee was easy, she was not going to do anything else on the potty though.  After quite awhile using pull-ups to train I started making a HUGE deal out of it when her pants were dry - starting with right after we had changed them and working toward right before she went to the bathroom.  Lots of treats here too. 

Finally it dawned on me that unless she HAS to go to the bathroom she might, but she might not.  So we switched to big girl underwear.  She got to go pick it out (day of the week Princess underwear - the kid has good taste!) and it was a family event. 

She had a few accidents at first and I had to do a lot of reminding to go to the potty but over time she did better and finally started telling me when she needed to go.  Now I only remind her if it has been awhile and I know she has had a lot of juice.

At night she still wears pull-ups and frankly, I'm fine with that.  I don't feel like it is fair to ask a child to be mindful of their bodies when they are sleeping (different than an older kid who just decides not to go before bed or get out of bed when they need too).  Once she is routinely dry at night we'll switch to big girl pants all the time but for now I am quite pleased with her progress and the smoothness of all of it!

For a time table - I'd say our first "outside potty day" was in April and we are currently in August.  She has been dry during the days routinely for probably the past two months with only a random accident here or there.