Potty training

Guess who's potty training?!

Moving to a big boy bed and now potty training - I guess I am just trying to get ready for a new baby around here:) It is going really well so far! I research things like this to death, so after reading 3 books on potty training from the library and numerous articles and posts online, I was making myself crazy. What is the BEST method? When is the BEST time to do it? In the end, I just woke up last Monday morning and after getting Will up, decided it would be the day! I didn't even tell Matt ahead of time - I just needed to stop worrying about it and go ahead and do it.

Day 1 went really well - he liked his new frog potty (and got into a bag of dress-up clothes while sitting there!)

In the end I didn't follow any one particular method. I know there are some that say you can do it in 3 days or even 1 day, and other books say it should be a slow process and not hurried. Here is what we did:

• I got the Fisher-Price frog potty. If I had to do it again, I may skip the "little" potty - I think it is built for kids much younger than 2 1/2 - he seems way too big on it (he does like it though)!
• On the very first morning when I got him up, I told him he was DONE with diapers. We packaged them up, got rid of the changing table, etc. I think it is confusing to "sometimes" still wear diapers or pull-ups during the day. I did read that it takes kids a while longer to wake up when they are asleep and have to go to the bathroom, so we use pull-ups (we call them "sleeping pants") ONLY when he is getting into bed. As soon as he wakes up, they come back off.
• For the first 3 days, we didn't leave the house. He had school on the third day, and I decided to keep him home. I'm glad I did - he was still having many accidents on day 3. By the end of day 3 we went out to a restaurant, and he practiced going to the potty about 4 times and stayed accident free! By day 4, he had the hang of it. We went to Bible Study, and he came and got me 3 times over a 2 hour period to tell me he needed to potty! By day 5, he was ready to go back to school and did great.
• For the first few days, he got a treat for going to the potty (an m&m). During those first couple of days, he wouldn't realize he needed to go until he'd started to go in his pants. This is how kids learn - for so long they just "go" whenever they need to, with no thought to it. On about day 4 though, we started rewarding him for keeping dry pants instead of going to the potty. I wanted him to learn how to tell he was about to go BEFORE he actually started going. So I'd ask every few minutes if he was dry and make a really big deal about it if he was.
• I got lots of kid's books and dvds about going to the potty from the library. He LOVED these and I think they helped him get excited about it - his favorite book is Calliou Potty Time and his favorite dvd is Potty Pirate!
• While we are at home he usually just wears a t'shirt and big boy pants. This way he can easily take them off and run to his potty without having to come get me first! We started out using Gerber training pants. I loved these - they are really thick so even when he started to have an accident it didn't mess up his shorts or furniture or anything, and yet they make him "feel" wet so he knows when he's gone.

Day 2, playing in his "spaceship"

After he went an entire day without any accidents, we gave him some Thomas the Train big boy pants! He loves them! Since then, he's had 4 days in a row with no accidents! I'm so proud of my big boy!

"Roar!" (He's a dinosaur, coming to get me!)