POTTY TRAINING: aka the worst job in parenting
i have been hesitant to write about kellen being potty trained because I didn't want to jinx it, any mom out there who has potty trained knows what i mean. but it has been a whole week now and i think things are pretty steady (fingers crossed).
i should probably start of by saying i have absolutely NO advice and i have NO idea how this happened.
i do know however, that when a kid is ready they are ready. i often look back at starting to train emma (at 23 months)and wish i would have waited a few more months until she could talk and understand better. but i by no means think that "ready" means they are asking to go potty out of the blue. kellen understood what was supposed to happen on the potty (from watching emma all the time) and just needed me to be firm in making him sit there and do it just once on the toilet so he could feel what going potty was. from then on he knew how to go even if it was just a dribble.
so here's how our week has gone...
last wednesday the kids were running through the sprinklers and emma came running in telling me kellen was poopy. that was an understatement. he had it up his back, down his legs, and on his hands.(why again do we waste money on swim diapers that keep nothing in?!)
i can't remember exactly what i was doing at the time but i completely lost it.. basically i told him poop is nasty and it goes in the potty and i am NEVER changing his poopy diapers EVER again. (and then i felt really bad about it later)
so i cleaned him up and put him on the potty and made him sit there until he went. he was already sobbing and i was fuming still so it wasn't too painful for me to just make him suck it up.
after probably about 30 min. he actually went a little so i put undies on and let him off. the rest of the day and the next day i kept taking him when he would start messing with himself and kept saying, "tell mommy when you have to go potty". he just went a tiny bit every time but we had no accidents until Friday morning...only because i didn't take him after he drank a whole glass of chocolate milk. that day he started actually telling me he had to go and went #2!!...this is where the spider man undies came about because i told him that we would go buy some once he did that in the potty.
we have been using diapers at night and nap time but he has been waking up dry 99% of the time...but i figure we will keep doing that until i finish off the diapers i literally just bought.
go figure.
on Saturday we went shopping all day so he wore a pull up but at Target he actually told me he had to go potty...twice! then later in the day he went at Mcdonalds and the gas station after telling me! i was a little bit taken back by all this but tying to keep my excitement to myself so i didn't jinx it. he started off having to go really often and only little bits but over a few days he learned how to get more out at a time.
so here i am now proud to say that we haven't had an accident since last Friday morning! the kid stinking tells me every time he has to go (even #2) and wakes up dry and stays dry for about 30 min. until he is ready to go in the mornings! he seriously has the "holding it" thing down so well and i don't even have to ask him anymore if he needs to go during the day.
i'm beyond amazed and i totally know this isn't usually how it goes with boys at such a young age (he just turned 2 in February) but man oh man am i happy to only have one kid in diapers!!!
thank you kellen for being SO easy with potty training....it makes up for your stubbornness with everything else in life, kind of. ; )
btw we use M&M's in different ways for a reward. like 1 for going pee and 2 for going #2. and when he was only going tiny bits at a time i would count as he pushed it out for longer and he got the amount of M&M's that i counted to (if that makes sense). and then obviously going to buy spiderman undies was the reward for going #2 the first time ever in the potty.
okay maybe I actually do have 1 tip to share...I have noticed that about 99% of the time my kids will stand up if they have to pee. so when i first start out training i typically sit my kids in front of the tv with snacks for a few days and stay right by them to keep watch for when they get up.
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