A Journey to Love

This shall be my last post about potty training, because frankly, I'm getting sick of writing about it and I'm sure you are tired of reading about it. So here is the conclusion to our potty training saga: Benjamin is still currently wearing underwear during the day, including nap time. He does his business in the toilet about 80% of the time, which is a pretty good number considering he just turned 21 months yesterday. At night, he wears a cloth diaper because I just couldn't handle changing his pajamas and sheets twice a night anymore. Neither one of us were sleeping well and our day was starting off wet and grumpy. He being wet, me being grumpy, that is. This is not a fun way to greet the morning, by the way. I chose to put him in a cloth diaper instead of a disposable because I didn't want him to think we were going back to diapers, since we had made a big production of throwing them away when we started this journey. So even though he pees in the cloth one ever...

All was going well in the potty training business until yesterday. Even though he was wetting the bed during his naps and bedtime, I didn't mind so much because he was consistently going on the toilet during the times he was awake. However, yesterday he had several accidents and pretty much all of them were my fault. After the obligatory early morning accident in his crib, the next one was when he was eating breakfast. He was trying to tell me he needed to go, but I couldn't hear him over the espresso bean grinder (priorities you know). The next two times were at a friends house, where I was too busy talking to catch him in time. He peed on her carpet, which was quite embarrassing, though I knew she understood, being she just potty trained her two year old last week. Then he peed during his nap, even though he went on the toilet right beforehand. Then after dinner he was playing outside and despite the fact that I was following him around, I was talking on the phone and there...

So technically we should be completely potty trained by now, considering I followed a three day method. However, upon further reading of that said method, I realized two things: one, it said that the child should be at least 22 months of age and Benjamin isn't quite 21 months old yet. Oops. Also, it did not factor in the vomiting-diarreah scenario, which we were so lucky to experience this weekend (can you hear the sarcasm?). However, the book did say not to stop for any reason, so we plugged along. So how is he doing? Well, he hasn't worn a diaper since Thursday at 2:30 pm. Out of 23 times of-ahem- relieving himself, 12 times were done on the toilet. That is over a 50% success rate, people! Give it up for the little, not-quite-even-21-months, guy! Obviously, he is not 100% potty trained. He peed in his underwear this afternoon, but this time he told me just as he started to go. An hour later he told me before he needed to urinate and we made it to the toilet where he c...

NO ACCIDENTS! He stayed in the same pair of underwear all day long! Woop woop! Okay, now that I'm done cheering, I must admit that his success today is not just because my kid is a genius (although he is :) I mentioned that he wasn't feeling well yesterday, which carried into today. He woke up completely dry and then all day long had horrible diarreah.  Luckily, he tells me when he has to go poop so we made it to the toilet all four times today without incident and subsequently he also peed at the same time. So he never actually had the opportunity to test out the new skill of "telling Mommy he has to go pee-pee." But with that disclaimer being said...BENJAMIN HAD NO ACCIDENTS TODAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm just a little excited. :)

So I wasn't counting on having to deal with throw-up and diarreah while on my 3-day Potty Training mission. That's Murphy for you, I guess. However, it did ensure that we (meaning Benjamin) sat on the toilet a lot today and although he had some accidents (eight pairs of underwear worth) we did have some success as well. For example, he woke up last night around 11:00 and I was able to get him to the toilet in time for him to pee. Mercifully he went right back to bed without a fuss. I had no such luck this morning, however. He began peeing just as I walked into his room to get him out of bed. Note to self: be super quick tomorrow morning. As for this afternoon, we spent most of it on the toilet. Half the time nothing happened, but a couple times he pooped and peed. Each time he did I would jump up and down and cheer for him, give him a high-five, and then hand him an M&M as his reward. Then we would go find Daddy to tell him the exciting news.  Basically, we acted like he...

Well, it's a good thing I was prepared for accidents, because accidents we did have. A lot of them. Benjamin donned his first pair of underwear after his nap today (around 2:30) and when he went to bed this evening at 8:00, he was wearing his fifth pair. He had one accident after his snack, two after dinner, and one right before his bath. I was not quick enough on any of these incidents to get him to the toilet in time to finish up, so all I was left with was a pair of wet Elmo underwear and a little boy sitting on the toilet staring up at me with a look of confusion on his sweet little face. It was like he was saying, "Why am I sitting here Mama? I just went potty!" So now Benjamin is asleep in his crib, wearing underwear, and I know that I will probably be changing his sheets and clothes in the middle of the night. And I know that tomorrow I will be dealing with more wet Elmos and possibly worse. But that's all part of potty training, right?

Today marks day one of our three day journey of potty training. I wasn't planning on starting this daunting task until after Benjamin's second birthday, but a few weeks ago he actually told me that he needed to go and then proceeded to actually go on the toilet. Ever since then, he does his business on the toilet about once a day. After doing a little research, I found a three day potty training program that advocates putting your child in underwear and monitoring him 24-7 over a 72 hour period. Whenever he begins to go I rush him to the toilet and encourage him to finish there. We are to stay home as much as possible during this time to minimize accidents and devote ourselves fully to the task at hand. Supposedly, after three days of this, he will be potty trained. Of course there will still be accidents and I will have to continue to encourage and remind him to go to the bathroom for quite awhile, but the hard part will be done. So today Benjamin and I picked out two pac...