Potty training – back on track!

**Warning–TMI post all about potty training.  If you don’t want to read about poop or pee, skip this post**

I can’t believe I’m saying this considering the state of my mind when I wrote that last post on Friday, but…potty training may be turning around!  We decided to just go for it this weekend with potty training, and if it didn’t work, then back in diapers on Monday. We planned to just stay at home all day, watch Natalie like a hawk, and keep her in undies except for naptime and bedtime (sorry, too scared to go there right now).  I scanned over a PDF of the “3 day potty training” method that my neighbor gave me and took a few basic principles from there (definitely not all — like we did NOT: throw away diapers, use undies during naptime or bedtime…), but these were the key things we followed:

• Don’t plan on or time regular potty sessions (i.e. every 30 min) — I think there are other methods that do that.  We had attempted that during the week and noticed it was making Natalie rebel and annoy her to use the potty when she knew she biologically didn’t need to go
• Instead, just pay attention and the minute they seem to go, whisk them off to the bathroom and put them on the potty….even if they completely wet themselves before hand.  The key is to associate peeing with physically going to the potty.
• No punishments — it’s okay if they wet themselves.  Just clean them, reassure them it’s okay and give them a change.
• If they do successfully go in the potty, celebrate like it’s the most amazing thing in the world.  Give them a reward if you like (we have “special tokens” — i.e. m&m’s)
• Always change them standing up
• Don’t ask them if they need to go.  They probably won’t know the right answer.  After going to the potty enough times at the time they pee, they will just start to connect the dots.  They may or may not tell you ahead of time they need to go.

The method calls for undies all the time, even naptime and bedtime, so the child doesn’t get confused.  We just weren’t ready and told her it was just for when she goes to sleep…and it hasn’t seemed to be a problem…and sure enough, everytime she woke up, she had a pretty wet diaper. Whew.

Anyway, this weekend has gone surprisingly well.  Saturday morning there were definitely a couple of accidents..but by afternoon, she remained dry in her undies until bedtime…and we were able to catch her or anticipate her going ahead of time.  She had pooped first thing in the morning in her diaper so we weren’t sure about that…..until Sunday morning, right after breakfast when she yelled at me that she needed to poop and I swept her up and off we went!  We went all day Sunday in undies without a single accident.  Unbelievable.

Tomorrow will be interesting since she’ll be back at school and the attention won’t be as concentrated.  We are hoping she expresses interest again in going with the other girls when they hit the potty.  We certainly think this weekend she has renewed interest with mommy and daddy jumping up and celebrating with high fives everytime she went.

Our next challenge, of course, will be naptime and bedtime–though I’ve read that many children are day potty trained for awhile before they are night trained, so no rush I hope?  She is still in the crib (we unsuccessfully atempted toddler bed for all of 24 hours)…but want to get her into a toddler bed soon, so maybe that’ll help with nighttime.

Wish us luck!