Potty Training!

It's been a busy month around here.

The latest big step in Brynn's supercharged growing up (ok, it just feels like that) was potty training this month.

Brynn and I spent 4 straight days together around Remembrance Day working on potty training. Mike had the tough luck of having to be out of town at a conference for 3 of those days.

Potty training was definitely an interesting learning experience. Also and experience in "well, that didn't work, let's try something else."

We started off with a little throwing out the diapers / pull-ups. That went well. I had picked up a few pairs of lined plastic pants. I actually wanted to go buy underwear before starting, but I also just wanted to start because I wanted to get going early in the day. That was definitely a mistake. Anyway I just let Brynn run around with no pants or underwear on for a little bit and had her potty in the living room, so it was nice and close. Some things didn't work though. For instance, I decided to try giving Brynn a sticker every time she went on the potty and then a balloon after 5. Unfortunately, all that did was make Brynn decide to go potty every 15 minutes once she realized what was going on. That was a bit much, so out went the stickers.

That was working ok, and then I figured we could go and buy some underwear. Definitely should have done that before. Trying to figure out what size she was and finding some she actually like resulted in several accidents. Luckily the plastic pants I had purchased contained it. I also figured out that Brynn figured they were diapers and that it was ok to pee in them, so beginning day 2, they were ceremoniously thrown out too. That helped.

Day 2 seemed to be the most frustrating. I think I was going a little stir crazy because I didn't want to go far from the potty. Then a friend of mine sent me this article on potty training in 2 days. It was very helpful because it helped me figure out if I should just be using praise. It was getting hard to just use praise when I was really frustrated, so it was nice to read a bit of perspective.

Anyway, we kept up the routine for another two days and we were pretty much finished. I had left the responsibility of timing to Brynn. "Make sure you tell mom when you have to go potty, ok?" But I realized that was not how the daycare would do it, so I talked to our daycare person and we came up with a compromise.

I really didn't want Brynn to be in plastic pants because she just saw it as not needing to stop what she was doing and I didn't want to take any steps backwards, but the daycare obviously couldn't have little pee accidents everywhere, so she agreed to trial without for a day. For them, they also always just took the kids to the potty on a regular schedule. Brynn had been used to this with diapering, so we figured we would try a combination of taking her to the potty, particularly when she was really busy playing (that's when she still has accidents) and also encourage them to tell her when she had to go. That worked really well.

Since then, we've had a few accidents, mostly when she gets distracted and doesn't want to take the time to go potty, a few when she is sleeping and when we go out and forget to take her to the potty (oops!). No accidents at daycare anymore though. Yey!

The next big step is changing day cares. Brynn starts a 3 year old program in a month. Hopefully it will all go well. I love where she is now, but she is now the oldest and it is time for her to move to a new program with new development opportunities. I really like the new place and so does she, but it is a bit hard explaining to her that she won't be going back to her old school after Christmas.