Potty Training

Earlier this year, we dabbled a bit in introducing the potty, only to discover that Isaac wasn’t really interested. Well, he was interested. Just not quite “getting it”. He wanted to wear undies. He was willing to sit on the potty. He didn’t have accidents. Sort of. He would hold it and hold it and hold it until it started slowly leaking out, or we gave in and put a diaper on him for a nap or bedtime. He would cry if anything came out on or off the potty. So, I took a break.

Two Saturdays ago, we made another go at it. It looked promising. But, he started doing the same thing. Holding, holding, holding. And wiggling, squirming and dancing… I felt like if he could just figure out that going on the potty was okay, that he would go with it, so I resolved not to give in this time.

For a couple of days we did the holding thing. He would reluctantly go a little bit, but only enough to relieve the pressure, I think. Finally, I offered a different reward… the cupcake. One morning late last week, while sitting on the potty, he told me to go away. While I was in the other room, he came in and told me he went in the potty. Upon inspection, I noticed he went while on the potty, but had directed the output across the floor. Close enough. He got a cupcake. He went again that evening, but it was still quite a struggle.

On Saturday, we headed to Blowing Rock to ride Thomas the Train at Tweetsie Railroad (pictures to come later, as we forgot our camera and all the sweet pics are on Derek’s parents’ camera). We decided not to deal with the potty training thing and threw a diaper on him. At 1:00 pm, after all the excitement, he was still dry from the morning. I tried to talk him into going in his diaper and eventually he did. He went two other times that day, both after being reminded that he could go in his diaper.

On Sunday, we had our breakthrough moment. After swimming at Lorena’s, he let me put him on Josiah’s potty (which is the same as ours). We started reading a book and he started going. And going. And was so proud of himself…

For the rest of this week, we’ve had a bit of a rollercoaster. He has been pretty consistently going in the potty for the first pee of the day. After that, and it’s probably mostly my fault for not being as diligent, we are prone to some more accidents. He usually gets upset and tells me about it, which is good, but it’s still a bit frustrating, especially when he refuses to try to go on the potty. I almost gave in to the diaper two days ago. Well, actually I did. But he took it off and said he wanted to wear underwear.

Today is the first day, where I feel like we’re closer to being trained than we are to giving in. He went in the potty 3 times and had one accident. AND, he even went number two in the potty all by himself, when I wasn’t in the room. (I was upstairs, cleaning up the one accident). And actually, the number two was half in and half out. He told me he “spilled on the carpet”. We will be getting our money’s worth from the steamcleaner we purchased around the time of Isaac’s birth… 🙂

We head to NY tomorrow. I’m pretty sure I’ll go with a diaper on the way up. We can get back to it while we’re there. I’m hoping that Jake can use his cool uncle status to help us seal the deal.