victory!

This is Owen's reward for being potty trained!  (Finally!)  He had to stay dry for 1 week to pick out a lego set. It's been about 2 weeks now and he hasn't had an accident.  He even wears underwear to bed with no bed wetting.  We only had to put up with nearly a month of cleaning poopy underwear.  Potty training has to be one of the worst things about parenting!  

You'd think having older brothers would help, but he didn't want to use the potty at all.  He was resistant at first, not wanting to wear underwear.  We didn't push it (probably because I wasn't ready to deal with it yet).  Since he is also nap resistant, I tried the "if you're wearing diapers, you have to take a nap", just to encourage wearing underwear.  Eventually he got excited about wearing underwear.  So we tried having him wear them for a while in the morning (when we didn't have to go out).  No success.  He didn't mind being wet.  When he had an accident, I told him he had to wear a diaper again.  Luckily, he was waiting to poop in his diaper.  We tried this for a while, but he just wasn't getting it.  The sometimes underwear/sometimes diaper routine just wasn't working.  We tried pull-ups for a little bit, but despite us saying they were "special underwear", he knew he could go potty in those.    I knew we had to buckle down and get him trained.  That meant NO MORE DIAPERS and I had to force  encourage him to go much more often.  This is a full time job.  He wasn't thrilled about using the potty often, so we had to bribe him with candy (which he didn't always want).  Once he did pee in the potty a few times, he was feeling really proud.  But he still wasn't telling us when he needed to go.  So if I didn't catch him at the right time, he'd wet his pants.  I think he was scared to poop in the potty.  We were cleaning out poopy underwear.  I absolutely hate this!  (I let him know that a few times too with a slightly raised voice...I hope I'm not the only one who has yelled at their potty-training deficient children.)  It's just so frustrating.  One of the days he had diarrhea... oh, that was no fun at all.  (And Alex was out of town too for that one).  Once we got going though with the potty training, there was no turning back.  He was making progress and he didn't want to wear diapers anymore.  Potty training was truly "march madness" for me!

Anyway, we had some adventures with lack of aim as well.  One of the first times he peed in the potty, Alex was helping him.  He was sitting on the potty (doesn't like to stand very often).  He started peeing, much to his surprise.  I think he was shocked.  It started shooting everywhere, all over the wall, him, whatever was in the bathroom.  I could hear screams coming from the bathroom, "Point it down!" from Alex, and crying from Owen.  He just didn't know what was going on!  That one was pretty funny.

I also have to tell you about his first poop in the potty.  We promised him he could get a small lego set when he pooped in the potty.  He finally did, and it wasn't just a small poop.  It was a big one.  He was so proud of doing a "big poop in the potty".  I took him to the store right away to pick out legos.  He couldn't stop talking about it.  He told all the other customers we saw in the store and parking lot about doing a "big poop in the potty".  He told the cashier that he did a "big poop in the potty."  He had to tell everyone about it.  But everyone gave him positive feedback - just what he needed.  He starting doing his poops in the potty.  Oh happy day!  He was getting it.  And he was finally starting to tell us when he needed to go.    

He was doing well, but we didn't want to call it official too early.  We figured that if he stayed dry for 1 week, then he was officially potty trained.  So we promised him a big lego set if he stayed dry for 7 days.  He did it!  Alex took him to pick out whatever he wanted.  He picked "Pirates of the Caribbean" - only problem with that reward is that it has about 764 pieces... sigh.  Oh well.  I'd take little legos everywhere to changing poopy underwear any day.