Adventures in Potty-training

Hey! I’ve missed you and wanted to tell you so. I also wanted to tell you … (and I hope I’m not premature in saying so) … I have no children in diapers!!

Can you feel my excitement?? I have a 2-year-old boy in underwear. Uh-huh! I do! Woo-hoo! Dance with me!! Okay, so he turns three in a couple months, but still. Oh, and we did have one little mess on Sunday, but that was a true accident: he was on the potty, but his trajectory was not. Other great news: he stayed dry all through church yesterday; he slept nine hours last night without waking us up and was still dry this morning! How cool is this?? (Did y’all catch that? I actually got a FULL night’s sleep last night!!! I haven’t had that since Rick and I went on vacation without the kids! *grin*)

Here are some stats for those of you who, like me, were intimidated by the task thanks to well-meaning warnings of others about how difficult it would be.

We survived the week by going through:

• 18 pairs of underwear (CARS was definitely the most effective. He didn’t mind peeing on Elmo or Diego, but Mater and “Ka-Chow” needed to stay dry.)
• 9 Pull-ups (We’ll still be using these at night until we’re sure he’ll stay dry.)
• 8 diapers (We only used these at night and then twice for outings: a trip to the grocery store and another to the preschool awards ceremony — by the way, congratulations to our daughter for receiving the “Most Fashionable” award!)
• 2 loads of laundry
• 1 1/2 rolls of paper towels
• 1 canister of Lysol disinfectant wipes
• 1/2 jar of Skittles (He’s allergic to dairy, so no M&Ms in this house.)
• 8 Matchbox-type cars
• 2 potty seats (one for each floor)
• 1 urinal (It’s peter potty cool!)
• a HEAP of patience
• a LOT of dancing (some happy, some peepee)
• a little more crying than I would like (mostly from the girl who wanted to go to the park instead of waiting around for her brother to use the toilet).
• and one booboo (The Boy panicked when he peed on the hardwood floors and started running only to slip in a pool of urine and hit his head on a nearby table. Ouch!)

And for comparison’s sake:

The Girl: potty-trained in 3 days at 34 months.
The Boy: potty-trained in 5 days at 34 months.

Note: I had two children in both cases, however, when I potty-trained The Girl, The Boy wasn’t mobile yet, he was only five months old. Training then was relatively uninterrupted. This time I had to juggle training with a preschool schedule.

Hope your weeks were just as nice! LOL.