Tuesday, March 17, 2015

Potty Training Success!


After we returned from our Christmas travels I wrote THIS blog post about the many days we had spent in the van in 2014.  I was so hopeful that 2015 would be very light on road trips.  As soon as Mikias started school, literally his second day back to school we decided to start potty training.

You see, T had most likely been ready to potty train for many many months.  I kept postponing the training because of all of our road trips.  M potty trained about 3 weeks before a road trip and traveling with a newly trained child was not something that I wanted to do again.  We were stopping so many times with M and I imagined the same would be true for T.  Since we traveled a long ways every few weeks in 2014 we just couldn't get it done.  2015 had great promise as no trips out of state planned for about six months.  Plenty of time to become a good "holder" before the first trip.

I got up the courage to do it and posted on FB that I was going to start in the morning as a source of accountability.  I am glad I did so I didn't chicken out.  I got LOTS of underwear ready and gated off the carpet areas.  I brought toys into the kitchen and moved the table creating a large area to play.  I got out lots of juice and milk and water and we were set.  T was very excited.


T: I love sleeping in my doll bed! (sort of looks like she is half a person)



So cozy! 


T: I can't believe I get to watch Gigi AND drink juice!  What a great day! 

T: This is much better than sitting on the floor.  Check out all my beverages! 


She ended up being super easy to potty train.  She embraced her panties.  She had one accident which is needed so that she can tell the feeling, and then she used the toilet.  I was amazed.  M was a super easy kid to train too.  I guess with all of my parenting whoas God decided to give me a break in this area.

We received big sad news around lunchtime of this day one of potty training.  Brandon got a call from his mom that Grandma R. was not doing well.  In fact the call said that she would most likely only live two more weeks (actually they might have said less, everything went so fast I just can't remember the initial timeframe).  We were pretty shocked as we had just spent time with her a few days earlier and she seemed to be doing fine.  She had lost weight, she was weaker, but she appeared stable.  Our hearts were sad.  I was internally optimistic, thinking that she was just having a bad spell and would bounce back.  A small part of me knew that was probably not super realistic since hospice nurses pretty much know what they are talking about.

Why am I sharing about all of this in a potty training blog post? Trust me it is very relevant.  Grandma R. went home to be with Jesus just a few days later.  T was on just on day five of potty training.  My next post will be about our trip home for the funeral etc, but I feel like it was important to mention this here as we look back on potty training because T did indeed do two long days in the car seven and ten days after beginning potty training.  She totally rocked that road trip potty training experience.  I was blown away.  I will share more about this in the next post too, but I am so impressed that I might just have to brag twice about this one.  She did not have a single accident while we were there.  She only wore diapers on the car trips so she stayed dry at the church, the farm, the funeral home, grandparents home, and cousins home.  Remarkable.

Overall she has remained very consistent in her ability to make it to the toilet.  A couple of weeks ago she really regressed and we have many, many pairs of wet panties because she would piddle a bit on the way to the toilet.  The last couple of weeks she has been nearly perfect.  I am so proud of her and so thankful to be in a season without diapers. We are still in the phase where she need to go to the bathroom RIGHT NOW when she lets us know she has to go.  We are doing a lot of running, but that comes with the territory.

She is still wearing diapers for nap time and bedtime.  She often keeps them dry, but wets them enough to cause us to keep her in them.

There are many great methods of potty training, but I am two for two with this one so I highly recommend it.  Basically we just don't use pull-ups, like I have never purchased one.  If they have an accident we clean it up, but thankfully they rarely do. Once each of my kids knew the feeling they were able to get to the toilet and go to the bathroom most/all the time.  We are proud of our big girl!


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