At the suggestion of my mother, I will attempt to chronicle our adventures in potty training. I'm sure my mother wasn't thinking I would do this publicly, but this is my current forum for writing our family history. So, proceed only if you really want to hear about what you think you're going to hear about: yes, pee-pee and poo-poo.
Okay, I'm already having a hard time thinking about how to write about this and try to make it at all interesting... will I really want to know these details in the future? Well, maybe with my bad memory I'll want to recall how old he was or some other larger detail, but I know I'll ramble. Oh well, I'll push ahead. (Again, no obligation on your part.)
Davey began showing his interest in the toilet and what goes on there several months before we began training. Both my mother and Dave's identified Davey's interest in us using the toilet and his need to share with us what he had done in his diaper as sure signs that he was ready. But Davey was only 18 months and I had just witnessed a friend battle with accidents for months on end when she jumped on similar cues from her daughter at 18 months and I didn't want to endure the same. When Davey and I were in Michigan for a visit in May (Davey 21 months), both grandmothers reiterated their opinions after seeing him in person. We then bought the "Once Upon A Potty" video and let him sit on my mom's potty chair to introduce him to the idea.
He really liked the video (no tv had kept his attention before that point) and soon he was always talking about baby Joshua (the character in the video) and sitting on the potty, though with diaper on. My plan was to potty train him after we moved, but while still in corporate housing in order to spare my own carpet. I know, that's probably bad karma or something, but I did it. So a week before his 2nd birthday, I finally got up the guts to begin full-on potty training. By that time I had also recognized that he was ready and loved the idea of not having two children in diapers at the same time.
The first day of potty training, I thought I was going to give up. It was so much work! That boy pees constantly! Every time I turned around, there was another wet mess to clean up. All I did was scrub the carpet on my hands and knees (wishing I had gotten a tarp for the floor). The plan had been to give him lots and lots of liquids, anything he liked, to make him need to pee and get a lot of experience quickly and to leave him only wearing a shirt so that it was quite obvious when he was peeing. Well, that lasted only that morning. After his nap he began receiving his normal amount of liquid. As for the solid stuff, I didn't think I had to worry about that yet. From what I understood, children are too afraid to go when they don't have the comfort of a diaper. That notion was certainly wrong in our case. That afternoon I had some serious disinfecting to do. I was sooo very happy to put him to bed that night and be done with it for a few hours.
Overnight, however, something apparently clicked in Davey's brain and he went pee-pee and poo-poo in the potty chair each time all day long. And I mean all day long. I was so excited the first time he did it, that I gave him 4 Smarties as a reward, thinking I needed to give him quite a few of them to make sure he knew what a big deal it was. By mid-morning, I was giving him 2 at a time, and that afternoon I was already down to 1. He was just getting too much sugar with his urinary frequency. I was again exhausted from doing nothing but cleaning that potty (literally within 5 minutes of cleaning it, it would be dirty again), but very happy with the progress we/he had made.
Picking up on the routine of dumping the potty in the toilet after it had been dirtied, Davey began peeing in the potty and then attempting to dump it in the toilet before telling me what he had done. Eew. Cleaning that off the back of the toilet and wall was not fun once I realized what he was doing. Thus, I stopped any attempt to do anything but watch him every minute to ensure I could dump the mess, with Davey's help of course.
After such quick progress, on the third day I started putting underwear on Davey in preparation for being able to actually leave the house. That set back the pooping a bit. He would still pee in the potty but would poo in the underwear. So we went back to wearing nothing again. After about two very boring weeks of never leaving the apartment and doing nothing but clean out a potty chair, I finally mustered the gumption to leave the house. I prepared for our morning out by lining his car seat with plastic bags and bringing along the potty chair on the seat next to him so he knew he could tell me he needed to go at any time. I think I went to two stores and stopped in the bathrooms on the way in and out of each store, trying to make sure we didn't have accidents. Amazingly, we had none! The first time I put him on an unknown big toilet was in Wal-Mart and he wasn't fond of the idea. So I let him throw in some toilet paper and have some fun and that seemed to do the trick. He was then willing to sit on it (after I thoroughly wiped it down, of course).
Now, almost two months after the first day, Davey has had only a couple of accidents and I am jumping for joy. It is sooo nice to be done with diapers (except naps and bedtime). And now he's graduated to using the toilet full-time, so I don't have to clean that potty anymore -- with the exception of when he uses it in the car. Yes, we have a mobile toilet. I don't know if that's strange or if every mom ends up doing it. I would much rather stop on the side of the road and worry about dumping it later than having an accident because I can't get to a toilet in time. But I do do an awful lot of stopping while we are driving. Davey seems to have visual clues around town that prompt him to need to go because I seem to end up stopping in the same places over and over.
He hasn't slowed down on his frequency either, which keeps me hopping all day. It is especially troublesome during church when we are always having to take him in and out, in and out. But, the embarrassment is worth it!
Well, if you have made it reading this far, you must really love Davey to be so interested. I hope you didn't lose your appetite.
After the wedding of Dave's sister, Katie, we were able to spend a wonderful week with the rest of Dave's family up north at his parents' place on Mullett Lake, MI. One of the things we did was have dinner at this great Polish restaurant, Leggs Inn, with a gorgeous view overlooking Lake Michigan -- a perfect photo opportunity. Take a look at this close-up of Davey!
