I am so tired/ delirious I’m thinking labor, delivery, and two days in the hospital sounds like a welcome break from potty training a toddler. Can’t my water just break already?! I’m half joking. Seriously, like everything related to having a child potty training is so much harder than I expected. I had all kinds of friends saying, “Our son did it in three days!” [thanks to Lora Jensen's 3 day e-book, which I did purchase and did find helpful.] Or… “After 5 days we basically have a potty trained boy!” [yes, Emily, I believe that was your facebook status.] When you read statements like that you think, “3-5 days?! Let’s DO THIS.” No one tells you those are the longest, most exhausting days ever.
I just thought that I wanted to get Graham trained before summer which is when I’ll want to be on lots of outings. I also thought: he doesn’t go outside more than half an hour a day right now, dependent on the weather, so why not potty train when he already spends the majority of the day inside by the potty? Well, we’ve definitely made great progress over the last three days and we’re not going back to diapers but I really owe a huge thanks to our Baby Bjorn Potty Chair.
At first we tried putting Graham on the big potty with an insert in it like this:
I have nothing against the insert. It held him really well. He didn’t seem afraid to be on the big potty with the insert and the splash guard worked really well about 9 out of 10 times. For some reason though we just didn’t feel like we had any major successes. If your kid will go with the insert more power to both of you because then you don’t have to dump out the potty chair and it’s less work to transition later I’m guessing.
For whatever reason though this morning, after two and a half days with the insert, we decided to go with the little potty and…. BAM! He peed in it without any pre-dribbles in his underwear. We were all smiles; he got a treat. 15 minutes later we caught him mid-crouch, ran him to the little potty and BAM… successful poop in the potty. The first successful poop in three days of potty training. We were so excited. Graham got a bigger reward– bubbles, which he adores. I was sitting on the ground in the kitchen blowing bubbles in the air. Graham was laughing and trying to pop them. Led Zepplin’s Kashmir was playing in the background (one of the few bands David and I both like) and we were all just cheering like crazy. It was like the sun had just exploded into our house after days of gray. I said to David, “Is this not the happiest you’ve been in three days??” He totally agreed.
I still think we’re a long way from saying Graham is totally potty trained but we are cheering “No more diapers!” around this house. Tonight was the first time he made it through dinner/ chugging milk with dinner that he did not pee in his high chair. We seem to be heading down the right path. I would definitely recommend the Baby Bjorn insert or Potty Chair but boy was I thanking God we had that little potty chair today. I have tomorrow off work so hopefully between the nanny and myself we can manage an even better day 4. Hopefully we will be blowing more bubbles and laughing and cheering in the kitchen.
