"Do the Potty Dance!"

Last weekend I woke up Saturday morning and decided I was not interested in changing diapers on two boys that day. So I told Philip we were going bottomless and using the potty instead of going potty in the diaper. I brought hiw green frog potty down into the living room and stripped him of his pants and diaper. Within a few minutes, he peed all over the end table. But the next time he had to pee, he went and sat on the potty. And he went. And he did it every time after that. Even going number 2 on the potty, twice! And it was really that easy.

Okay, so I wouldn't go so far as saying he's potty trained. Not quite completely. But he has done SO GREAT this past week with going on the potty. When we're at home and he's bare-bottomed, he gets up from whatever he's doing and goes, without so much as an announcement. He's only had two accidents in the house since we started the whole process. Adding underwear into the mix made things more complicated. I think that's where we had problems in the first place when we attempted potty training last month. The underwear gave him a false sense of protection and he would just go in them. Now that he has an understanding of what needing to go feels like and what happens when he doesn't make it to the potty, he's learning how to hold it until he can get to a potty. When he has the underwear on, we make him take potty breaks or ask him if he needs to go. Just today he told us for the first time he had to go while he was wearing his underwear so we could help him get them off. We were so proud!

Going out is trickier. He's afraid of public toilets so we take a potty everywhere we go and he sits on it in the car and goes before we go in anywhere and before we get back in the car. So far this is working well but getting used to going on a big potty is something we'll need to conquer before too long as traveling with a potty in the trunk is kinda... gross. When we go out he wears his cloth training pants or underwear with a pull-up over them to contain any messes. I like the underwear under the pull-up because it still allows him the sensation of being wet and doesn't feel like a diaper. At home he wears his training pants or underwear and he's still wearing a diaper for naps and bedtime. We have him use the potty right before his nap and he's been waking up dry pretty consistently. Yay!

All in all, so far potty training hasn't been nearly as terrifying as I had thought it would be. Of all things parenting related, this has been the one thing I've been most worried about and fearful of. But Philip's really making it easier on us that I could have imagined! We're so proud of our big boy and so excited that he will be potty-trained and ready for pre-school in the fall!