Potty Training

Guess who wears big boy pants???  That's right, my little boy has another accomplishment to add to the growing list of things making him more like a little boy, and less like a toddler.  The phrase "big boy pants" is one that I've said at least 80 times over the past week.  Let's just say we've been doing a lot of celebrating in the bathroom around our house recently. 

Here's a quick re-cap of the journey.  The past few weeks Jack has been giving me all the signs that he's ready to be potty trained (aka pooping during nap time and taking his diaper off and throwing said poop under his bed.  Yeah, you can imagine how much I loved that.)  But, with Jack being my oldest, I didn't know where to start, and frankly I had tried introducing the idea a couple of times before and failed miserably.  This time, however, the stars all alligned and it went incredibly smoothly.  My friend sent me an article she found on pinterest called 1 day potty training.  (Yes I'm one of the only 29 year-old females around not on pinterest.)  It had some really good ideas to get us off to a good start.  First, and maybe most importantly, we were supposed to ditch Ella and have one-on-one time the entire day.

 Yeah, I missed this cute little face all day, but Steve took the day off to hang out with her and Jack absolutely loved the one-on-one.  We started the day off with a quick potty demonstration by our newly acquired bath time baby.  She peeed in the potty (I'm not sure how many eee's that word has, but you know what I mean), and pooped a tootsie roll.  Amazingly, Jack followed suit.  It was only 9 am and we were off to a fabulous start!  After that we tanked him up on lots of snacks followed by plenty to drink.  We spent the morning making potty trips every 15 minutes, and doing whatever else Jack's heart desired.  He was in heaven.  We spent an hour or so doing art.  Which was followed by a couch snuggle and watching one of the ice age movies. 

Then we moved on to playing with playdough which lasted for a really long time!  Here's my bad mother confession.  I don't think that I have EVER spent the entire day playing with my child.  I play and interact, but most of the time it's whatever I can pull off while unloading the dishwasher.  And let me tell you, it was exhausting, but also so much fun.  I loved it because he loved it.  He kept saying things like, "hey mom, want to play fire trucks again?"  Such a cute boy! 

 And then there was quite a bit of playinig with the bath time baby.  After all, it's the first time we've had a doll in our house. 

He bathed her and then the two of them did this post-bath dance.  He's hillarious!  By this point in the day he was catching on nicely, and was completely over having me remind him to use the potty.  He took the initiative to go when he needed to, and now 5 days later, he still has only had one accident which was my fault.  I put him in shorts with a weird clasp button that he couldn't undo in time.  He stayed completey dry the first night which I still can't believe.  And here's the kicker, on day 3 of being potty trained we went swimming and he came over to me an hour or so into it and said he needed to go potty.  He didn't even pee in the pool.  He is fiercly independent.  He never tells me when he has to go, he just goes and takes care of business.  It is a great feeling to now have only one child in diapers.  I am so pround of my Jack!

Here's the big boy himself with his potty-training bribe.  We told Jack for months that when he was potty trained we would go to target and he could pick out whatever toy he wanted.  I was a little worried while he was browsing on the v-tec isle, but he came through and without any prodding settled on this $10 fire truck.  The only draw back is that it just may be the loudest toy in the entire store.  Oh well, he loves it!