So after our 3 day immersion I thought that Blythe did a great job, but I wasn't sure that she was really ready to be sans diapers and I can't really expect or even ask Lauren to do potty training with her because lets face it, even with a rockstar pottier it can be hard work, or maybe not. Anyways the game plan was to let her be in diapers in the morning and continue the potty training at home with me until she got better. Of course this is a bit confusing for her which was demonstrated on several occasions in the morning when I dropped her off and she was holding herself, she wasn't asking to go to the potty or even looking for Oslo's potty but she was holding it and had to be told that it was o.k. to go tee tee.
I think part of being a parent is second guessing yourself so of course I thought well maybe this wasn't the way to go and maybe I should have waited until my mom or MIL could be in town to continue the training at home or maybe I should take a week off now to stay home with her instead of at the end of the pregnancy. My problem with the waiting part was that I really just needed/wanted to know if she was truly ready to be potty trained or if she/I just thought she was showing signs of being ready. My other problem with waiting was that IF she was truly ready to be potty trained I wanted there to be enough distance from the 'loss of diapers' to the new baby arriving that she didn't see the loss of diapers as a result of the new baby.
I am not one to read a bunch of parenting books and parent by a method and certainly the same applied during potty training. I came up with a system and of course as you read below found some things in my system that needed to be tweaked. I was curious what these 1 day and 3 day potty training methods were about so I did a little Internet research. Apparently a lot of what I was doing was the same as far as a 3 day immersion, stay at the house, naked from the waste down part. The main difference in what I was doing was that they do not have you set a potty timer and simply have you put a potty in each room of the house (I think that is a little excessive, but...) simply tell the child that tee tee and poo poo go in the potty and leave it at that. If they have an accident than you say something like uh oh you forgot to put the tee tee/poo poo in the potty and move on. At the conclusion of day 2 I had decided that I was hovering too much and needed to give her some space, which I was better at on day 3, but not like today.
When we got home today at 2:30ish I took off her diaper and she was still dry from the start of her nap (12:30) so I figured she would need to go before too long. I set the potty in the living room and we played. I have to admit that is was REALLY REALLY hard for me to not ask her if she needed to sit on the potty when she was holding herself and clearly holding it for dear life, but I did it. I just kept reminding myself that an accident was no big deal, she isn't truly potty trained if its just me knowing when she needs to go or hanging out in the bathroom with her until something materialized. She danced around the potty several times. She would sit for a few seconds and if I happened to make eye contact I said "good job," and then focused my attention elsewhere, knowing that she is pretty independent and this needed to be about her making the choice to use the potty. After dancing around the potty and thinking about the potty she finally decided to sit on it and to my surprise she sat down, pushed, and then stood up and proudly proclaimed "BIG POOP," I walked over to investigate and sure enough there was big poop in the potty!! Even if this was our only success all afternoon it would have been great because I wasn't constantly asking her if she needed to go to the potty and she had made the decision on her own, but it didn't stop there. She proceeded to go tee tee in the potty 3 more times and even another poop (all unprompted and completely on her own accord)! That is 5 visits to the potty in the span of about 4 hours and zero accidents....WOW. I must say that this afternoon was the easiest and least stressful of all the days. I guess this is just one more way of her showing me that she doesn't need me and she's capable. To say that I am over the moon proud of her is an understatement.
Don't get me wrong we still have plenty of hurdles to jump such as remembering to go to the potty when we have pants on. I guess the first step is teaching her or letting her teach herself how to pull them up and down (surely if she can put her shoes on and off she can master pulling loose pants up and down). I can see that she is more into this potty idea if its all on her own so I am going to have to let her/help her figure out how to get pants up and down. Jason isn't a big fan of her running around sans pants, but he understands the importance in the early days.
We had a VERY exciting, VERY successful potty training day and it was ALL Blythe. Way to go baby, you did awesome, and quiet honestly a LOT better than I thought. I had convinced myself that our true success from this weekend was just because of my hovering or my constant asking, but I can see that you really do 'get it!'
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