Monday, January 29, 2007

Ding, ding, ding...

We have a winner. My friend Colleen guessed correctly. Miss K has been doing really GREAT on the potty. She stayed dry in her pull-up all week (last week) and on Saturday I put her in "big-girl-pants." She stayed dry. Sunday too... Today too....

Knock wood... Throwing salt over my shoulder... (is it the left or right one?) All that good superstitious behavior stuff....

What we're doing... We remind her to go to the bathroom every 3-4 hours... Sometimes she even tells us she needs to go... if she won't go, we take her in the bathroom and get her to sit on the potty. She will go when she's up there.

She's even staying dry at night. I'm having her sleep in a pull-up for a bit longer, but she's been dry several nights so far (5 or 6, I've lost track).

She was ready for the push towards potty-training. She's been close for a long time. She got interested in potty training when she was really young... like 13 months... She started pooping on the potty pretty much every day a LONG time ago.... I actually expected her to just do it all by herself ... I was expecting it any day now... (Have been since June...)

I finally realized that I needed to get into the frame of mind to really make an effort to help her figure out the final bit...

A side note...
Miss K does have a fear of going to the bathroom when she doesn't have the little potty seat that fits on top of a regular potty (to keep her from falling in). I didn't realize the extent of her fear until we were out Saturday ... She was in her big girl pants. I tried to get her to sit on the potty at the library... Oh, my the screams! (Did you hear them? Around 4:30 pm? Yea, that was K. She did not want to sit on the potty!)

Fortunately, after we'd been out for ~3 hours, I was able to convince her that I could hold her and keep her from falling in.... Well, I couldn't convince her that I would keep her from falling in until I bribed her ... I told her that if she went on the potty we could go to the ICE CREAM STORE and she could get chocolate ice cream with m&ms on top.

Woo-hoo! It worked. It also helped her get over her fear a bit.

This morning, she and I went out and got princess big girl pants... Then she found a princess purse that she needed... Then she found some Dora shoes... She got them all. I was weak... I figure we're saving money on diapers for her from here on out... Miss K was probably less expensive to potty train than Miss N. Miss N wanted trains (Thomas trains) for her reward... We probably had to get her 6 or 7 trains before she was potty trained. (Those trains are expensive!)

I'm sure we'll still have to work with Miss K for a while to make sure she stays dry. I always say that at first, potty-training is getting the Mom / Dad / nanny to remember to get the little one to the bathroom in time. It takes a while for the little one to internalize it all. We're definitely well on our way, and Miss K is definitely working really hard, but I'm not naive enough to think, "we're done..."

We also get to do this again in 12-15 months again with Miss T.

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