Day 77

Today was day 3 of potty training.

I realized this morning that I can't turn back now. I was starting to get frustrated and the temptation of diapers was lingering in the back of my mind. I made the decision last night to go cold turkey with diapers. When I woke up this morning, I started to wonder if that was such a good idea. But my little girl surprised me-she could've cared less that I took away her diapers. And we were successful in going potty on the potty chair 3 times!!!!! It seems like after each potty she's starting to understand more and more what we are trying to do.

But we did have our challenges. For instance, pooping. Usually with poop comes pee and well, despite her effort to stop the pee, she couldn't. I know that pooping on the potty is going to take time. She was pretty upset about the whole ordeal and I had to help make her feel better by telling her that it was an accident.

There were 3 other accidents today. All of which included her telling me, "mommy, Elmo potty!!" as it was happening. One time she even tried to make it to the potty. I learned today that you can't really leave your child alone for even 10 minutes when potty training. You kind of need to be right there at all times which is tough for me. Right now I'm alone and there are things that need to be done around the house, like make lunch or dinner for instance. The times I have caught her in the middle of peeing, we run to the bathroom and sit on the potty-even if she thinks she's all done.

Another thing I learned was to hold back my excitement until after she finished going potty. If I start clapping or saying "Look! You're doing it!" she stops instantly and says "all done!" when she isn't. Just one of those things you pick up as you go along.

So we're basically 50/50 right now. I don't count the poop incident as an accident because that's a tough one to learn. I do highly recommend the removal of all diapers. I still have pull ups on hand-just in case. But I don't plan to use them as of now.

My favorite moment of the day, and believe me there weren't many, was after her third potty. She wanted to watch the DVD of Jon reading books to her. As soon as he started talking, she exclaimed (literally) "DADDY! Woocy sticker, tweat! Pee pee Elmo Potty!!!" She was so excited to tell him and it broke my heart when she realized it wasn't the web cam and he wouldn't respond with more then, "Is Spot under the stairs?" But she still kept reading along with him and pointing to her sticker, proudly announcing, "sticker, pee pee!" to him every few minutes. It was the sweetest moment of my day