Potty Training - Days 1 and 2

We've decided to give potty training one good fair shot before baby brother arrives in May. Saylor is still pretty young and I know it would be more ideal to do it during summer time, but she's been fairly interested and I sure as heck won't be up for much potty training this summer with a newborn around. So, we picked a method (the 3 day cold turkey approach) and set the date for this weekend.

This method is pretty intense - you basically pump liquids into your kid all day, get rid of the diapers and don't leave the house. I had heard good things about it from several moms, and a few messy days seemed better to me than months of trial and error, right?

I actually have felt less worried about this transition than I did the big girl bed, mainly because I knew if it didn't work we'd just put the diapers back on and try again later. (But we needed that crib)! So it was nice to approach it with no to little pressure!

On Friday after work, I took Saylor shopping to buy some "big girl panties." She was definitely excited and even opened the package and wanted to try them on right in the shopping cart at Target.

Then, first thing Saturday morning we got to work! Here are all the "supplies" we needed:

Here she is checking out her new panties

Putting on a pair of Dora's

And throwing away the diapers (which I promptly retrieved from the trash when she wasn't looking, just in case).

We did LOTS of this all day - let her drink tons of stuff she normally doesn't

The idea of this method is that you don't ask the kid if they have to pee and then take them to sit on the toilet forever. Instead, you remind them to keep their panties dry and tell mommy/daddy when they need to go. You have to literally follow your kid around all day and CATCH them in the act, then whisk them to the potty to finish. If they get anything at all in the potty, they get a reward.

I'm not going to lie, things started off a little rough. It was really hard to follow her around watch her like a hawk ALL day. The first 3 times she peed it just went everywhere. She would just look at us, surprised, like "where did that come from?" And it happened so fast there was no way we could get her to the potty in time to finish. So, we ended up spending the rest of the morning in the bathroom, just hanging out, playing, eating lunch. etc.

We finally got a tiny bit into the potty and Matt and I jumped up and down and screamed with joy and excitement, which excited her of course, but not as much as her M&M and sticker. That sort of made things click, and by dinner time, we were 11 for 16 in the potty! (yes, she peed more than 16 times yesterday - matt made me promise we'd ease up on the liquids for day 2). 2 of her 4 accidents were #2 - which I hear is harder for them to get?

Today has been much better - she's had no accidents with #1 and we even broke the rules and ventured outside to play and made a quick family trip to Target. Tonight after dinner she did poop in her panties...so we still have work to do. I know we're not out of the woods (thinking about all our normal activities that we do AWAY from the house - how the heck is that going to work?), but I think she's made a great start! By today she was actually climbing onto the potty and taking of her undies all by herself!

We've been putting pull ups on her at nap time and night time but more often than not she's woken up dry or woken up and told us she needs to go and been right.

I will say, we've had a LOT of false alarms, thanks to the whole "I want more candy" thing. So, we'll see how it goes weaning her off of that...fun, fun. :) It's definitely a commitment to be running to the bathroom so often, but I feel like now there's no turning back!

Spending a lot of time here the past two days!

Her sticker chart at the end of day one

So proud of you Saylor, you are doing such a great job and you are such a BIG girl!

And SO THANKFUL for my awesome, wonderful, fabulous husband who totally tag-teamed this effort with me. I can't imagine doing this without someone to split it up with. All weekend I've been thinking how grateful I am that Matt is such an incredibly helpful, involved daddy to our little girl.

Here's to 7 or 8 weeks (hopefully) diaper free before we pull out the newborn sizes and start this party all over! :)