Adventures in Potty Training

Woo! School’s out! It has been a long long HARD year. Even though I have woken up before 6:30 all 4 days on my Summer Vacation, I have loved every second of not having to into my classroom. More on this awful, crazy year later.

I decided to jump straight into Summer by starting to potty train Bryson. He was more than ready and has been showing “signs” for quite a while. I, however, have not been ready. I didn’t think that it was fair that I couldn’t give him my all when I got home from work at 6ish, and he went to bed at 8:00. I’d much rather give him my attention in other ways. Plus, I wanted to take on this milestone; I didn’t want to throw it at his teachers. SO, the journey begins.

I am the type of person that reads and researches things for weeks before I make any big decisions. Same with potty training. I researched and read probably 10 different methods, hundreds of personal stories, and then came to a decision with what I wanted to try.

I ended up with the 3-day Potty Training Method and pretty much copied every single thing that this (amazing) momma did with her little boy that is a little older than Bryson. I think I stumbled on her blog through Kelly’s Korner last year. Every good teacher knows that if something works, use it… and so I totally used every single thing she did. :)

Bryson is no stranger to the potty. In fact, we’ve had his little potty out for almost a year and every once in a while I’d mention it, or he’d ask to sit on it after watching me go to the bathroom or something. This definitely wasn’t his first rodeo with the potty, which helped A LOT.

I KNEW that is was time when he and I were at Chick-fil-A for lunch a couple months ago and he jumped up and ran (without me) straight to the bathroom, yelling that he needed to go tee-tee. I left the food and ran after him. He went tee-tee and we cheered excessively. He asked if I needed to go, so I did. I was still cheering for him and saying how proud I was of him and that he was such a big boy, yadda yadda. Well, we walked out the bathroom into the open area full of customers and he yelled, “YAY! Mommy such a big girl, you went tee-tee in the potty!!” HA! I died! Everyone got a good chuckle and I turned 5 shades of red!! And so, I knew, it was time to get rid of the diapers if he was telling me he needed to go out in public, before we were about to eat, AND at Chick-fil-a! :)

SO, I prepped the house and got all my fun “potty stuff” ready to start bright and early Monday morning.

(poopie prizes)

Made the list of people for his super short “success calls”

He threw away his last diaper after he woke up

He was thrilled to wear his “big boy underwear”

I asked him no less than 300 times over the last 2 days:

Are your underwear dry? YAY!!

Bryson, do you need to go teetee?

Did you make sure to get all of your teetee out?

You are such a big boy!!

Make sure to tell me when you need to go potty, ok?

Day ONE:

Teetee-16

Poopie-1 (I started giving him Fiber gummies along with his regular vitamins to help with this)

Accidents-2 (ONLY at nap time!!!!)

He went through 4 pairs of underwear- mostly due to directionality of his projection of his teetee…aka not pointing it down quickly enough! Haha

He did great with my 20 minute timer for the first few hours, but got pretty irritated with it early in the afternoon and just flat out refused to sit on the potty at all when the bell went off. So, I kept adding time, all the way up to 45 mintues in between (which really stressed me out!) but he never had an accident so I gave up the timer and just let him tell me when he was ready. Amazingly enough, it worked out great, because he didn’t have ANY accidents while he was awake!! We practiced running to the bathroom A LOT throughout the day.

The funniest thing from the day: B was playing in his room and I came back from the kitchen to get him to try to potty. I found him under his bed playing with a toy.

Me: Hey bud, it’s time to go potty!

B: No. Bryson a caterpillar. Now Bryson a butterfly. Butterfly’s don’t go teetee in the potty.

HAHA!! Can you tell we read the Very Hungry Caterpillar a lot? J

He went potty before bed, then Michael got him up to go around midnight, but he still work up wet at 7:45 this morning. I doubled up on training pants, but it didn’t seem to matter. I am trying to skip Pull-Ups all together, but we may have to pull them out for sleep times. We’ll see…

Day TWO:

Teetee-14

Poopie-1

Accidents-3 (one at nap time, one eating lunch and one in the bathroom trying to pull down his underwear)

The morning went SOOO slowly because he just didn’t want to drink anything. He kept telling me his “tummy was so so full of drinks”. Poor kid.

But, he really did great! He did have one true accident while he was eating lunch, and then just couldn’t get on the potty quickly enough for the 2^nd one. Again, I don’t know what to do about nap time. (And by nap time, I mean quiet time, because he didn’t nap either day. Just stayed in his room for about an hour playing.

Also, after a successful poop, he stood up and looked at it and said, "aaahhh a poopie snake! its gunna get my bottom! hurry flush it down, mommy!"

HAHA!! he always makes me laugh! :)

It was hard having to stay in the house for 2 straight days. I really didn’t want to go outside, because he LOVES LOVES being outside so much, that I wasn’t sure if he would voluntarily come back inside to go potty. So, we did a lot of playing…

Singing

Making forts

Racing trains

Watching Toy Story (I know I wasn’t supposed to let him watch tv, but I realized he hadn’t seen that movie, but had been SOO excited about his Buzz and Woody stickers, so I gave in.) :)

Also, I gave in and we played outside a little bit :)

He also didn’t have a whole lot of interest in calling people today, except Jen and my mom. They got like 5 calls! Haha! Every time we would get to the “tell someone” part of our routine, he would look up and say, “Bryson not tell someone. Sing bear hunt with Mommy.” Or, “no call family, play in the fort and color”.  It was a huge hit yesterday, but definitely wore off today.

 His stickers at the end of the 2nd day

Since he didn’t take a nap, he went down early. Michael woke him up at midnight to have him go and then amazingly enough, he woke up DRY at 7:45!!! HOORAY!!

Day THREE:

Teetee- I kinda stopped counting after 13 :)

P-0

Accidents- 1 (after nap time, trying to get out of his room )

(I know we’re supposed to be under house arrest for 3 straight days with this, but I decided to test my luck and take him to a fun “beach party” at our church for about an hour and a half this morning. )

I packed our little portable potty in case he needed to go, since the church bathrooms wouldn't be open.

Even though he went riiiight before we left, he told me he needed to go again as we were driving down 75. I pulled over and he went in the potty in the front seat on the side of the highway. HAHA!!

I was worried that he was going to be too busy playing to tell me he needed to go, but we took a potty break in the middle of playing in the sand and he went twice. woohoo!

He had a SO much fun running around in the sand and playing in the water. He loved seeing Pearson and Dayton and his other "church and Jesus friends" :)

The rest of the day was great. He did have an accident after nap time (yay! he took a nap!). There was a little wet puddle right next to his door. Oops. 

I'm crossing my fingers about another DRY night tonight!! I think he definitely is getting the day time down. WOOHOO! he is SUCH a big boy. I can't believe it's time for my baby to be in underwear. Holy Moly! 

I can't tell you how proud Michael and I are of him. :)