Potty Training, Take 3.

It’s official.  The potty training has begun on Number 3.  If I have anything to say about the matter, this is the last time I am going to go through the potty training thing.  The first kid was a tough one.  So tough, in fact, that when, on the weekend of the second kid’s second birthday and he asked me if he could sit on the potty, I flat out said “No.”  I continued to say “No” for several days.  I told him he was “too little” and explained that I didn’t even have any pull-ups in the house.  Little did I know that this was the absolute, perfect strategy for Number 2.  After a week of him asking, I finally relented and put him in these itty-bitty underpants.  He never had a single accident, and I got to completely skip the pull-up in between thing.

And while I know I got off easy with Number 2, it is safe to say that after 8 years, I am really, really tired of poop.

The Little One starts school next month.  A big motivator to get going on the potty training, for sure.  I could hardly start anything like that with us traveling for a month, so after the jet lag wore off, it was clearly time.

I tried a new strategy this time.  One morning, we woke up and I just put her in big girl princess underpants.  Every twenty minutes that whole first day I asked her if she had to go potty.  I went through every single princess in the package.  She peed on the couch a couple of times.  (Which was perfect timing as we had been meaning to get a new couch anyway.)  I did a lot of laundry those first few days, but it seems to have worked.  She announces to the world that she needs to go and she runs to the potty.  She refuses to use a seat of any sort, all the way declaring “Me a big girl.  Me do it.  Me do it.”  And she does.  Ok then. 

But there’s one catch.  While she’s good at the pee-pee part, she absolutely flat out refuses to do the other on the potty.  I’ve coaxed.  I’ve explained.  I’ve even made up stupid songs to sing, but to no avail.  So after a few days of dramatic accidents (made dramatic almost entirely by me, because as I said, I’m sick of poop) we reached a compromise. Now she tells me when she needs to go, we put on a diaper for that part and we go on about our day. 

But I hope this is temporary.  I’m really, really sick of poop.