The Great Potty Training Experiment- Part 2.

Day 3- Sabbath:
We were debating whether or not to go to church on Sabbath. It’s always an off-schedule day for us, and with the ‘stress’ of the whole process, keeping him alert and enthused, and wanting to avoid either a mess or regression, Serena wasn’t planning to take him. But since Alexander hadn’t really fallen into a pattern (or a habit- at least any good ones) yet, she thought that she would at least take him to Sabbath School with the kids in Ann Arbor, and come home for a routine lunch/afternoon after that. But much to our amazement, Sabbath morning, something just seemed to ‘click’ for him. We could tell he was trying to stay dry by doing a little dance, and when we asked him if he needed to go he said yes, trundled off to the potty, and did what he needed to do! Mama reluctantly put him in pull-ups (aka diapers) for the going out, but he stayed dry throughout Sabbath School, had a little leak in the p-up on the way home in the car, but finished the job in the potty as soon as we got home. The rest of the day was one of several potty successes and a few little leaks, but overall very encouraging to all of us after the first couple days.

Continued…
Throughout the week, Alexander has continued to make a lot of progress, much to our relief and encouragement both to himself and all of us. Tuesday, he was more wet than usual spending the day at Nana’s house, and being away from his routine. But Nana’s little potty seat snaps into the big toilet, and he thought that was pretty cool. Wednesday we dared to venture out to Target in his ‘big boy undies’ and he was dry throughout the whole trip. He’s holding it longer, and making more complete empties with fewer little leaks, meaning less nightly laundry for Mama!

We’ve tapered down a bit on the rewards for being dry, having found that the all-day munching was creating a very wound-up and whiny boy. Sometimes he even forgets about the rewards for going potty and is happy to have us enthusiastically sing his little potty song (he’ll request it if we forget) and call him a hero– “Who’s a hero?” “Zahzah!” comes the reply. “Three cheers for Zahzah!!! Hiphip…Hooray!…” I’ve also added nuts and stickers to his reward dish, and he only gets M&M’s for ‘tinkle’– not for being dry or having a ‘good try’ . (He has yet to make poopy in the potty, but we’re working on one thing at a time and he doesn’t like it in his pants for sure, so he tells us right away… we’ll see when this clicks in). He’s also still very attached to having Curious George join him in this process, but after a very frustrating ordeal on Wednesday morning concerning George and Alexander’s very insistant particularities that ended in a monkey plunged into the grown-up toilet (fortunately the water was clean), George has taken a bit of a break from the scene- much to Mama’s relief.

Day 8- Thursday, One Week Later:
I’m pleased to announce that as of naptime today, one week later- Alexander has been dry all day (with one poopy change, but not wet!) He’s even started to tell us when he needs to go. And though he insisted that he didn’t have to go after lunch today, (Mama figured that we’d then end with up wet pants), when he was ready he told us he needed to go, headed to the potty- and did his job just fine. So we’ll see how our experiment turns out- weeks, months who knows. But today he did go into this little discourse about his Huggies Overnights (haven’t embarked upon overnight training at all yet) and ‘big boy pants’ and then pulled out the regular diapers saying that they were for babies and he was a big boy. Later, at lunch he gabbed about ‘Zahzah growing up- be man like Papa.” …Becuase then he could eat his own yogurt (instead of sharing with mama) and he would be allowed to scrape the sides with the spoon. “Soon enough,” said Mama. Soon enough, indeed.