Potty Training...SUCCESS!!!

My first attempt at potty training Emily was when she just turned 2 years old. She had shown some interest in using the potty and so we bought the princess potty seat that sings when it gets filled. The odd thing was that her first success “filling” was with a poo-poo. We were so excited…we grabed the camera and took those embarrassing pictures that we get hold over her as ransom when she gets older.

Now, at first, we just let her sit on the potty whenever she wanted and we didn’t force her to use it at all. However, once I officially attempted to potty train, then she put up a huge fight. She wanted no part of sitting on her princess potty, on the big potty…nothing. I tried the candy method, my mom had a present wrapped and ready to bring over once she went potty in the toilet…but Emily just didn’t care. I finally threw in the towel and just figured she wasn’t ready.

Fast forward one whole year. Emily has been showing a lot more interest in potty training…I just kept pushing back the actual training because I thought it would be easier to train when I started summer vacation…and then I pushed it back more because we decided to take a vacation to San Francisco and I didn’t want to have to hunt down toilets every hour. Finally, the “right time” arrived and potty training began.

Now, you can laugh all you want…BUT…potty training TERRIFIED me!!! I was afraid of all of messes that I was going to have clean up. I am a clean freak and I so did not want stinky stains on our nice living room rug, and I just envisioned having to clean up mess after mess all over the house. So, to aid our potty training adventure, I sought out the help of Jen Lovelady and her “Pro Potty Trainer” System. Jen is an amazing mother of 4 and has an abundance of great wisdom! She gaurantees that your child will be potty trained within 3 days or your money back. That was the selling point for me. I didn’t want to deal too much with potty training past 3 days.

I bought the program (It was pretty inexpensive…I want to say about $30. I can’t tell you about the program because I don’t want to give away the tricks…just know that we were 100% happy with it and it worked 100% for us) and after the first day, I was ready to throw in the towel. Emily never once made it “in” the potty. She had an accident right NEXT to the potty, in the hallway after sitting on the potty for a good amount of time, etc. Luckily, every single accident was on the bathroom floor or on our wood floors…never on the rug! It wasn’t until it was time for bed, that first day…we put her back in a diaper to sleep in and once we finished her bedtime routine, she started to cry and cry and cry. She was saying that she had to go potty and she didn’t want to go in her diaper. I thought for sure that this was Emily’s way of trying to extend her bedtime, BUT being the nice mother that I am…I decided to let her out and try to sit on her potty chair one last time. And BEHOLD…the chair sang it’s potty tune as she WENT POTTY FOR THE FIRST TIME!!! We did a potty dance…we high fived…we were so so excited for her!!! We then called Nana and Papa to tell them the good news. It was the cutest phone call ever!!

Day #2 of potty training was practically perfect. The only accidents that we had on day #2 were when she started to go potty in her panties…but she was able to stop herself and run to the bathroom, so there was no clean up involved…just putting on new panties. That was it!!!! By the third day, she was potty trained pro. I am so proud of Emily (and so thankful I didn’t throw in the towel after the first day).