They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Soooo…
…need I say more? 
[These little undies were robbed from little dresses. I went into the store to actually buy some training undies, and much to my shock, a pack of 3 Strawberry Shortcake undies were $8!! I thought to myself that there is surely another thing I can use... so the little dresses with pantaloons have been put to much use.]
I’ve been in one of those what-else-can-I-get-done-before-the-baby-comes sort of mindsets recently. There are all sorts of things that have been wondrously checked off my lists (checking things off lists just thrills me to pieces, in case you don’t know. If I do something noteworthy that wasn’t on my list, I will actually write it down just to get the satisfaction of immediately crossing it off! Silly, I know, but oh the wonderful feeling! ).
Soo, when I was talking with my friend, Shelly, a few weeks ago, and she was telling me about potty-training her then-20-month-old, I was inspired. I had been thinking that it would be nice to have Zoe’ trained before the baby comes, it would be one less thing to try to change later on, but I hadn’t attempted it yet. The talk with Shelly was all I needed.
When Zoe’ awoke from her nap that afternoon, I excitedly told her that from now on we are going to wear panties!! I explained to her that we do not want to make the panties wet, no no, we certainly do not! They are sooo prettttyy and we want to keep them nice and dry! So she needs to tell mommy when she has to go potty.
She looked at me with her gorgeous blue eyes and seemed to understand all that I was saying. I was tickled pink. It seemed as if she was already trained, such a smart little girl I have. She already understood!
Two soaked pairs of underwear and two wet spots on the carpet later, and no successful potty stops, I decided to call it a day. Hey, there’s always tomorrow, you know?!
Well, “tomorrow” came the following week. Or was it the next? One of those weeks when I was just at home for most of the time. And wow, I found that my days were suddenly soooo long and sooo short at the same time! Setting the timer every 15 minutes for the first day made it seem like we had an eternal timer beeping. Spending my entire day at the toilet, is all I can remember. You just can’t get much done in little minute segments! The following day was a little better, 30 minute intervals, which gave us both a little more, um, space?!
She did very well with it, considering that her mama suddenly started making her pee in the pot all the time, without much warning. We pulled all kinds of tricks out of our bag, since the every-few-minute segments seemed to bore her to death. We saaaaaang sooooooongs, we read booooooooks, we giggled and ticked and laughed, we said flashcard verses, we cheeeeeered and claaaaaapped and shouted “HURRAY!!!!” when the right thing was deposited in the right place. Oh yes, we were very dramatic, we were. That seemed to help things a lot.
And now, several weeks later, our little girl is potty-trained. Well, if you take out the nap-times and night-times. We still wear more securely waterproof things on her then. But she has been doing so well, and will come frantically running to me for every little potty break! So very cute, but makes her seem so grown up already…
Hopefully all the training sessions won’t have been in vain when the baby arrives. I’m holding my breath a bit on that one! But for now, we enjoy dry undies, less money spent on pampers, and a happy little family…
-clarita
