Success??

It may have finally happened.  I've been battling with Thomas over the whole potty training issue for what feels like forever!  If you put him on the potty he will pee, and recently, even though I vowed against it, he'll pee standing up.  It's hysterical to watch with him not quite being tall enough, but it makes peeing easier for him and he doesn't have to strip naked, which he usually does anyway.  The real battle with him has been over #2.  In the beginning we'd just follow a routine.  we'd put him on the potty when he woke up in the morning, before and after nap time, and before bath time.  We weren't concerned with weather or not he went in his diaper in the in between time, just about making him understand that going to the bathroom is just a regular part of the day.   Sometime he was really good and the diaper would be seemingly dry, other times I'd wonder how such a little kid could pee so much in one little diaper!  But he would never poop in the potty and we've been putting him on it for months.  There was that one time, but that was an accident and he was more surprised than anyone.  A couple of weeks ago we, however, we had a real breakthrough.  For an entire weekend, Thomas pooped on the potty.  Tom would see that he needed to go, put him on the toilet and there was great success.  So I thought we had finally turned a corner, how silly of me.  Come Monday morning, when Daddy was at work and just me was trying to get him on the toilet for #2 all hell broke loose!!!  That's when Thomas started to devise he newest trick, other than hiding from me when he was off pooping in his diaper.  He would fight, kick and scream and you would finally get him to sit on the toilet, rather than just stand there to pee.  He would make a tiny deposit and gleefully accept all his accolades and his special bag of m&m' he gets for not pooping in his diaper, then my little cherub would go off and finish the job in his diaper.  Oh what fun that was!  And that's how things went for awhile so I stopped fighting with him to get him to use the potty.  But when he did poop I wouldn't just up right away to change him, so maybe he'd start to see that using the toilet is a much better alternative than his pants.  

I slowly started to make some more little changes.  We live in a very small house with only one bathroom (we don't count the free standing toilet in the basement), so I moved his little potty seat out of the bathroom and put in down in the kitchen, just so he'd see that it didn't have to be a production when he had to go.  Around the same time Thomas stumbled upon an Elmo game online that when on about something like, when you got to go, go, and you can continue what you were doing when you're done.  Thomas loved it and starting talking about it all the time.  Keep in mind we have a whole bunch of potty books and videos that he could care less about, but Elmo apparently has the magic touch.  Since he was talking about it so much I decided to focus on peeing and teaching him to hold it until he was on, or in front of, the potty.  I had bought him Cars pull-ups months ago, another lame attempt to get him to use the toilet more, right up there with is camo and Spider-man underwear that also had no effect.  I decided it was time to try them again, but this time I made a game out of it.  The front of the diapers have either a Piston Cup or a helicopter on it that when you pee would disappear, and Thomas LOVED to make them disappear.  But I told him that if there were there whenever I checked he'd get a sticker, and low and behold, it worked!!  He even started showing me the front of his diaper and say, "See Mommy, there's still there!"  Through all this I also told him not to poop in the pull-up because honestly they're even more expensive than diapers.  He was doing a good job with all this, he even reached the point that after he'd pee on the potty he'd ask for a regular diaper afterwards since I guess he knew another deposit was coming. 

Over Thanksgiving(s) I had decided that I was just going to have to lie come time to sign Thomas up for preschool in February!  I was ready to tell them his was potty trained and when the first day of school rolled around I'd pray that he actually was potty trained or I'd lie though my teeth the first day he had an "accident".  I know, I'm a terrible mother =)

That was all until today, however.  This morning, Thomas asked where his potty was because, "I feel like I have to go potty."  So he he got himself set up and made a deposit!!!  Later in the afternoon he started to go in his pull up, but he feverishly ran to his toilet to finish up!  And just earlier, during his bath, he told his Daddy he felt like he had to go.  Thomas got out of the bathtub, waited for Tom to run downstairs and get his seat, and he pooped again!!!  

Looks like I might have to change the name of my blog soon =)