Progress

***WARNING: This is a potty training update. If you think potty talk is crude, skip reading this entry!***

My potty training approach was much like my "nursing" approach...why read books, why get advise...this is a natural process, it will just happen naturally. I should have learned the lesson from my failure in nursing, you can always use help, support and advise!

The story begins in October. We were still at the old house, just shy of moving into the new house. I always heard that big, major changes cause potty-training set-backs, so I was not going to attempt to begin potty training until we moved. However, at that time, Claire was staying with Becca and Becca was potty training Jonah (3) and Claire and Sophie took an interest. So I bought her a potty with no intention of working on potty training. But the child is smart I tell you! After giving her a bath, I would wipe out the tub and for several weeks, I would turn around and she would be sitting on the potty and actually going potty! That's as far as we got in October and November.

Fast forward to December. Mom (me) was on vacation for a couple of weeks around vacation and I thought this was an ideal time to train her. I still had not picked up the first book or asked for the first piece of advise, but I had been around moms and toddlers enough that I had a few tricks in my back pocket. Like the one where you give them as much juice as possible throughout the day, set the clock to go to the potty every 10 minutes and they are trained in one day...that one didn't work for us. All it did was make her revolt from wanting to sit on the potty at all.

Back to square one.

We took a little break. I wasn't passionate about potty-training and neither was she!

Fast forward...February. I walked in to pick her up from school one day and her teacher, Anna Claire, asked me if I had even considered starting to potty training because, as Anna Claire said, "she WILL be 3 in November." My gracious, I thought. The child just turned 2. Aren't we rushing the pressure and she has 8 more months until she is 3.

But since Anna Claire was new and I wanted to atleast show her that I was somewhat interested in her opinion, we went to Sears and bought panties and began our potty journey again.

Since I am running out of time and your attention, we are doing really well on potty-training as of today. Claire has not had a pee-pee accident in some time and is actually telling us when she needs to go and not us reminding her when to go. #2 is a different story, but we have made alot of progress the last few days. We are on 2 days in a row of going in the potty!!!

Our only remaining obstacle is public restrooms. Bill, inadvertantly, reacted to a dirty bathroom in Wal-green's a few weeks ago and said it was "nasty" and now she won't go in public restrooms. I don't blame her, but carrying her potty around in the back of the Tahoe is getting a little old!!!!