PT BOOTCAMP: DAY 3

Ah, Day 3, how we looked forward to you!

It was a better day, for sure. Not GREAT, and not EASY, of course, but MUCH better!

To start, James woke up dry again! Jay took him to the potty and he wouldn't go more than a few drops, but at least he didn't put up a fight. He drank just as much fluids today, but we had far less pee-pees overall (only 6 times today) and only HALF of those were accidents. James went 2 more times on the potty this afternoon and gave full deposits. And he was dry throughout his 2 hour nap again!

The trick for James turned out to be a bit less on the reminders (we only told him every 5 minutes or so today) and a bit more on forcing potty trips based on his body language. When we saw him do the pee-pee dance, we'd remind him to "Tell Mama when you need to pee-pee". The second time he did it, we reminded him again and told him to keep his undies dry. On the 3rd time, we scooped him up and said "James is doing the pee-pee dance because he has to use the potty. Lets go use the potty". (This all happened very quickly, obviously. It's not like we let him walk around needing to go for 10 minutes.) And we sat him up on the big potty, positioned ourselves right in front of him on that little stool, and talked to him about it. We told the pee-pee to "come out" and "lets go". We watched for it. We asked "Pee-pees, where are you?" and anything else we could think of to get James thinking about peeing (and not about getting down off the potty). We made the "psssss" noise. We encouraged him to squeeze it out. And he loved imitating all this, of course. I hope he isn't the only kid at daycare tomorrow making sound effects while he urinates...

You heard that right. Daycare. I considered staying home with him one more day tomorrow to be sure he's "got it", but in all honesty, I think daycare will be good for him. He can start going with the K2 class and will be able to see that the other kids go, and are happy to do so and are proud of themselves. We think it will help things click for him even faster. Hopefully the overnight dryness will continue, and hopefully BM training will soon follow (he didn't go at all yesterday, and didn't go today until late this evening after his bath, while walking around in his fresh undies - oh well, I just followed the method and did the same thing I did yesterday - he was a little upset about it, poor guy).

We're going all-or-nothing with this. No more diapers. No pull-ups or cloth training pants (at least, not yet - though we have ordered some to use for long car trips and plane rides). Tomorrow he goes to daycare in his undies and we have a talk with them about watching for his pee-pee dance and not treating him like a baby anymore (no more laying him down for "changes" - dirty undies are changed standing up only). The 3-day method is tough, but it's effective. It will be a while before he's accident-free, but he KNOWS when he has to go. Sometimes he tells us with words and other times just with body language. He's willing to go on the potty (and having him talk to his "pee-pees" has helped a LOT). These are BIG points of progress in our book. We may have had to tweak the method a bit to make it work for James, but we did it, and I'm proud of us ALL for surviving this weekend!

Of course, we are totally exhausted. Potty training is emotionally and physically tiring. Constant vigilance is hard work. You want them to succeed SO badly, and it's difficult not to blame yourself when they don't. Toddlers are heavy to keep running to the potty every 10 minutes. Entertaining a 2-year-old in the house for 3 days straight requires LOTS of running around the kitchen, horsey rides, mama/daddy jungle gyms, creative coloring, and lots of TV. Oh my goodness, James has never watched this much TV in his life. How do we know? Because for the first time ever he is reciting commercials. As sad as that is, it totally cracked us up as we were fast-forwarding through commercials while watching WALL-E for the umpteenth time today and accidentally stopped in the middle of the Hot Pockets Side Pockets commercial, and James beat them to the punchline "Hooooot Pockets!" So yeah, I think we're all ready to change things up tomorrow. I'm looking forward to spending the day in the solitude of my office. Where is does not smell of urine.