Adventures in Potty Training

Way back in November (when Georgia was just shy of 2 years old), I thought she was showing signs that she might be ready for potty training. Of course with the holidays fast approaching and plans for travel, I decided if we were going to try it before the end of the year it had to be then! I asked several of my mommy friends for advice and came up with a plan. We bought a potty and little, tiny panties, and some potty prizes.

And decorated the bathroom with her favorite characters.

The plan we were going by was "3 day potty training." It says multiple times in the book that you may think they're making no progress, but by the end of the 3rd day, you'll see it. So, we did the full 3 days and saw absolutely no progress. She didn't seem to get it at all! So, we decided she must not be ready, and we put it on hold. 

The whole experience was absolutely exhausting for me and I think I decided it would be okay with me if she was in diapers for the rest of her life! But no one seemed to agree with me, so, with a little pressure from people who will remain nameless, I decided about a month ago that we should probably try again. This time, though, our house is on the market and, theoretically, we could have people coming for showings at any time (although so far we've had NONE!) So, we didn't go all out with decorating the bathroom.

She got one sticker chart...

on the inside of the cabinet door.
(She filled it up pretty quickly!)

She really started off great! She would pee in the potty and even tell me when she needed to go and we had very few accidents and no big messes to clean up! Her big reward was marshmallows- 2 for pee, 5 for poop. But, poop proved to be a big issue. She refused to go. Not just on the potty- she refused to go at all! And you could tell she was in pain, but she just wouldn't go. We changed her diet some- cut back on dairy and added more water, to make it easier for her to go, bought books about pooping, and offered her all kinds of prizes if she would go in the potty! I guess it was about a week and a half or two weeks into potty training when she figured it out. We finally learned that she wanted privacy to do it. She started doing it and never turned back! (Actually, now she wants to poop nearly every time she's on the toilet!)

(wearing one of her prizes- her princess dress)

She went through a small regression where she was having accidents daily. We figured out that we had kind of slacked off on the praise and rewards, so I got online and found a great idea for a reward chart and printed it off.

She gets a sticker every time she potties and her panties are dry. If she lands on the red star, she gets an extra prize (usually M&Ms- or as she says "em-nims"- or ice cream). And when she gets to the end of the tracks, she gets to go ride the carousel at the mall. She finished her chart Saturday, so we took her to ride and she had a blast!

We went again today. She's doing a great job keeping her panties dry!