On Potty Training

After some nudging from a good friend of mine who recently potty trained her not-quite-two-year-old little boy, I've decided to write a post about how I trained my daughter. I told her she should be doing the post and not me, but that didn't work, so here goes nuthin'.:)

Now, when I was preparing to potty train Princess, I read a ton of material. Blog posts about how mom's have a 100% success rate with their method, books, articles endorsed by pediatricians, etc. I thought I would have her trained in a hour flat and never have to change another one of her diapers again! Yeah, it just didn't happen that way for us!
I was able to potty train Princess when she was just about two-and-a-half. Despite the many, many things I read about not starting and stopping potty training, that just didn't work for us. When I first tried with Princess, she contracted a very bad case of RSV shortly into our training, so I immediately stopped. Strike one. Then about six weeks later, I tried again, but realized she just wasn't ready to be potty trained. She would stay dry for the most part, but refused to do her -ahem- 'dirty business' in the toilet. I decided after the fifth or sixth 'number two' accident that we would try later on in the summer, after things calmed down in our lives a little bit. Strike two.We were gearing up for a long family road trip, and I just didn't want to deal with that on our vacation.
SOOO, finally in June I decided this was the time it was going to stick, and I buckled down. I ended up sort of combining a few tips & tricks I'd read about and made a hybrid method that seemed to work great!
Right when Princess woke up that glorious morning, I took her out of her diaper and put her in big girl underwear (she calls them 'nunders') and a t-shirt. I told her that we were going to have a really fun day together, and that if she could keep her 'nunders' dry all day, I'd give her a surprise. I had decided earlier that we were just going to spend the majority of our day in our kitchen, where there is a bathroom close and its easy to clean up any accidents. No TV or movies for the day; just her and I and lots of coloring, puzzles, and books.

We headed down to the kitchen and started our day with a big sippy full of apple juice. I set our kitchen timer for 15 minutes, and each time it went off we headed to the big girl potty. I'd set her up there on her toilet seat and wait. If she did end up going- even just a drop or two- I'd do a little jig and sing the song my mom sang to me when I was little. It goes like this...

I'm proud of you

So proud of you

And I hope that you are proud as I am 

Proud of you 

I'm proud of you....

And I hope that you are proud of you too!

She then got 2 (because she was two) M&M's each time she was successful on the potty.  She even got to choose which colors she wanted! 

After about two hours of this, I pulled out her baby doll. I told her that her baby doll is learning how to wear big girl nunders too and I let Princess play with her for a few minutes. Then I took the baby doll and in my stealth mommy-mode, slipped a syringe full of water behind her and made the baby 'have an accident' on our kitchen floor. I then gasped at the baby and said 'Baby doll! We don't go potty on the floor. We go potty in the toilet.' Then I took the baby to the toilet and she went potty in the toilet, all with Miss Princess watching. She thought it was pretty funny, but honestly, I think that's what solidified the idea in her head. 

After the incident with her baby doll, she started telling me when she needed to go to the bathroom. I think that's when I knew she got it. When she started asking me. She did have two little accidents that day, but that was it! The next day she was dry all day, and I told her that for lunch the next day I would take her to go get chicken and fries. That was her surprise because my little Princess thinks that getting 'chicken and fries' is the coolest thing to do in the whole world. Isn't that funny? We even threw in a little ice cream cone to celebrate.

After she was fully potty trained by day, I still put her to bed in a diaper. However she would always wake up with a dry diaper so I just decided to give it a try and put her to bed with underwear on. She hasn't worn a diaper since! She is day and night trained, and I couldn't be happier!

A couple of notes:

• before beginning potty training, I had let my daughter watch me go to the bathroom. I believe this can help in the process of training, but of course, isn't for everyone.
•  I didn't expect to night-train her for a while, but it ended up working out for us; I don't have any words of advice on that, sorry!

 Hope this helps those mom's out there think about potty training!

What about you? What successes have you had in potty training?