Potty Extravaganza: Day 1

It’s the end of our first day of the 3-day potty training method!  I’m going to document day-by-day – mostly for myself and interested family, because I know this is probably really boring to everyone else!

It’s hard enough for the 4 of us to stay home all day – we all like to be out and about (including Meredith – when she’s not tired). But it’s even harder when trying to keep a vigilant eye on the two-year-old. This method recommends that instead of asking the trainee to go potty or taking them every, say, 15 minutes, you just catch them (every time) in the act and rush them to the potty. Obviously, this means accidents are guaranteed. However, with consistency and lots of praise, supposedly this will help the child learn his body signals quickly.  We’ll see!

Day 1:

Woke up, ate breakfast.  Changed into “BIG BOY UNDERWEAR!” around 9 am and just a t-shirt – no pants so everyone knows when something’s happening!  I felt like a broken record – one that only says “you’re clean and dry!” or “remember to tell Mommy or Daddy if you have to pee-pee or poop!”

Oh, and one more phrase – “yuck, your underwear is all wet!” – that one, while running with a bewildered toddler who had started to pee on the floor.

I tried to take Russell’s picture in his first pair of underwear – well, while I messed with my settings, he started peeing.  So here’s a picture of him in his second pair:

For the first 3-4 times, Russell didn’t get anything in the potty.  When you think about it, it takes a while to get there: he starts peeing, we run him to the potty, we get his underwear down, we get him settled on the potty (this is a little harder with boys than girls).  So by the time he got there, nothing was left.

However, he started to get it later in the morning.  He would start peeing, and when we said “yuck” and picked him up, he would stop, and wouldn’t start again until on the potty!  Yay, progress!  Come afternoon, he still wouldn’t tell us when he had to go, and would start to go in his underwear, but it didn’t even make it to the floor before he stopped and gave us the look that meant “get me to the potty!”

So while we went through a good 25-30 pairs of underwear, we “only” had to clean about 15 accident spots.

I had all kinds of fun activities planned for the day. Some recent favorites: watching Cars (the movie), racing our Lightning McQueen and Mater toys, playing football, reading books. Some new activities: a new set of animal window clings, some foam pumpkins and stick-on rhinestones, Play-Dough and cookie cutters.

I’m spent.  So is Jason.  We’ve definitely seen progress, but we’re really hoping he’ll start telling us when he has to go!