ADVENTURES IN POTTY TRAINING!!!!

WOW! The house is so quiet when I am the only one awake! I have a lot that I should be doing, but I thought instead I could update our adventures in potty training....here we go again! This is a warning that this post contains information from the trenches of motherhood, and if you have no interest in potty training, you should move on without reading this. I decided to write this mostly so that when Levi is older, I can embarrass him with it.

Last December Levi was getting upset when he would go #2 in his diaper, so we got him some underwear. That didn't last too long. Then, in March had a serious attempt at it, which was working until mom was sick in bed for a week. Since that time he wears underwear occasionally. We had a pretty busy last few months of company, so I wasn't going to push it on him then, but now that the company is gone, we are potty training for the last time.

Levi's problem is not that he is scared of the toilet. When he sits on the toilet he empties his bladder just fine. The problem is that he is so focused when he is playing he will not leave his toys for the three minutes to use the restroom. So after many failed attempts we have resorted to the sticker chart. Now, you can call it a reward system, but lets face it. I am bribing my child to be potty trained. I tell him I will give him a sticker (2 stickers for #2) and then when his chart fills up he gets a toy. I have also been a really over excited mom when he goes potty in the toilet so that he knows how happy it makes me. After a week, he has earned a new train (Gordon). And we are working on chart #2 that has twice the number of spaces. This is a picture of him at target when he bought his train with his chart. He was too excited to take time to get a good picture.


So he was going #1 on the toilet rather well, but just wasn't attempting the #2's. I was pretty sick of cleaning up the #2 when they fell out of his underwear onto the floor so once I had Levi do all of the dirty work. We go in the bathroom, he takes off his underwear, which spills all the little pebbles onto the floor. Then he empties the rest of the pebbles into the toilet, which gets more pebbles on the floor. Then, he takes toilet paper and picks up all the pebbles he has put on the floor and puts them in the toilet. So he has now learned that Levi puts his own pebbles into the toilet, whether he does it the easy was or the hard way.

As for mom and dad, potty training has given us lessons in sanitation, insanity, patience, patience, patience, and patience. He is doing such a great job and we are so proud of him for being diligent and loving his sticker chart!