Potty Training

It has begun. And it is cold turkey. No diapers. No pullups. Nothing but 24 pairs of cute little Fruit of the Loom tidy whiteys will forever more be on my 23-month-old son's behind.

Now, I've never taught a boy to use a toilet. But I've taught three girls. I've heard girls tend to learn quicker than boys do. We'll see. Either way, I'm committed.

Today was day 1. With plenty of undies at the ready, I put Lucian in his first pair. He promptly yelled at me and took it off. He was vehemently opposed to wearing the cotton underwear. Tugging at the front, he would scream until he got them off...

So I let him go naked. From time to time I would put him back into them (at some point he had his first accident in them). After his first accident in his underwear, he would stop mid-stream if he was wearing them and become upset that he had wet them.

Picking him up, I ran to the bathroom with him and helped him onto the big potty. No dice. It scares him. He was also hating the little potty. WHAT TO DO, what to do...so I put him in the bathtub and turned the water on a bit. As he played in the water, the sound triggered the urge to go again. I have to clean the tub now, but at least it isn't on my carpet (and I call that success).

During the day, I offered him lots of liquids so that there would be many opportunities for him to use the potty. While he never did go in the potty, we had a small breakthrough close to bedtime when he had a bm. He went on the floor, I put it into his little potty (telling him that this is where his poop goes) and both of us walked to the bathroom for him to dump it into the big potty. Once I flushed the toilet (he didn't want to) he was no longer scared of the big potty. He now sits on it without distress.

Before bedtime I took him to the potty again to give him the opportunity to go, and then put him to bed. I'm nervous about him sleeping without a diaper, but there's no going back now.

What we noticed today, though, was that he was communicating with us more than we had thought. Even though he doesn't speak much, he had no problems letting me know when he had to urinate. I even saw that him do the potty dance. He was visibly upset when he had an accident, and would attempt to stop when he did. He tried so hard not to.

I know no one is particularly interested in hearing about this in great detail, but in the interest of updating family (and because this is my blog), you get to hear it too. I'll try not to make it a normal thing, but you'll probably get a lot of this for a bit. Sorry!