potty training!!

This past Saturday we took the leap from occasionally sitting on the potty chair or toilet for fun (or an attempt at playing video games) to seriously working on making it a way of life.

After thinking about it for at least a month, I finally made the decision I think on Thursday of last week, when we were at Target and I decided to get some "prizes" and treats to help with the project, and also made a pretty big deal of getting underwear for Jo. She helped pick them out, and from then on was talking just about nonstop about her "undies".  We talked it up for the next couple of days, how she was going to learn how to use the potty chair and wear undies, and she was definitely interested. I had read The Potty Boot Camp: Basic Training For Toddlers by Suzanne Riffel and mostly followed her program, with a few other ideas I tossed in from other sources I've looked at along the way.

So Saturday morning started and, not for the first time in the last 2+ years, I was so thankful for the disposition that God has given my Josephine, she is very easy to work with, is quite patient and very compliant. I explained the situation and she took it all in cheerfully, I know she especially liked the idea of getting juice and pretzels all day long. No horror stories to report, she had 5 accidents in 5 hours, she cleaned all of them up by herself and withstood the cold bath water to clean herself and her soiled pants (mostly) on her own, she actually thought the drills of going to the potty chair, pulling down pants, sitting down, pulling pants back up to practice the process over and over were fun (the idea is that it gets really tedious and helps dissuade your kid from having an accident and thus incurring more drills), she maybe got tired of them at the very end of the day when she was just tired in general. She had no problem sitting on the chair and reading for 5-10min at a time which, according to Riffel, could be where bribes and cajoling could be quite necessary. She got through the afternoon and evening with only one more accident and actually deciding by herself that she needed to go, and she went!

In the days following, we've had lots of false alarms, she'll sit on the potty to pass gas, and we've had accidents on our hardwood, outside on the sidewalk, and on a bench at Grandad's work today (happy birthday, Dad!), but it's been very encouraging. I'm glad that the process is at least started, I was getting so tired of hauling her 35+lbs up and down from the changing table, and all those diapers! It'll probably save us $40-$60/month in diaper costs. We're still using Pullups for nap and bedtime, but hopefully that won't be for too long. She's been dry waking up from naps at least twice now, I think she's really getting the hang of it all.

I am seriously considering that we'll start this with Naomi by the time she's 18months. Right now she's working on pulling herself up on things, taking a couple steps with a lot of help, and turning 1; but the clock's ticking, and Mama likes the idea of 2 potty trained girls...