Adventures in Potty Training: A Week in Review

Greenleigh’s daycare teacher has been after me to put her in underwear for a while, but I just wasn’t ready.  I mean, it should be about her being ready, right?  But what about me?  What if I don’t want to clean up the messes?  What if I’m not ready for her to grow up?

After a heated debate last Sunday night Erajh said that he was on her teacher’s side – he thought she should be in underwear.  It was time to rip off the band-aid.  It should be noted that by the time I get the girls up and ready in the morning, Erajh is long gone.  In fact, he’s not even in our same county by the time they wake up.  No threat of having to stop everything and be late to work to clean up messes, no threat of her peeing on his clothes as he carries her down the stairs, and no threat of her peeing or pooping in his car on the way to school.  Sure, this was an easy executive decision for him to make.  Reluctantly, I agreed to give it a try.  Greenleigh has been in Pull-Ups for 6 months, and while she initially made great progress, she had become lazy and knew she could just use it as a diaper instead.

So Monday morning I bit the bullet and put her in panties.  She seemed curious, but not really all that excited when I put them on her.  Completely out of my mind nervous doesn’t even begin to explain how I felt while Greenleigh drank her milk and sat on my side of the bed (I tried to get her to move to Erajh’s side, since it was his idea and all, but she’s a creature of habit).  I think I must have said, “Are you absolutely sure that you don’t have to go to the bathroom right now?” a hundred times.  “Potty?”, “Bathroom?”, “Are you sure?” are the phrases that filled the next 20 minutes.  Forget the fact that she had just gone.  I was sure she needed to go again.

Luckily, we made it to school without incident, but I did learn a valuable lesson – don’t ask a toddler if they need to go to the bathroom just as you finish buckling them into their carseat.  They will undoubtedly say yes, causing you to have to unpack the entire car, only for them to get inside and giggle at you while not going to the bathroom.  My mistake.  Next time, we’re just going and they can worry about it at daycare, if she really even has to go.

As I dropped her off at school that morning (with a back pack filled with no less than 7 pairs of underwear, 3 spare outfits, and 4 Pull-Ups) I gave the teacher a list of scenarios where she should just abandon ship and put her back in Pull-Ups.  I mean, I wasn’t really all that attached to the underwear plan to begin with.  One thing that was clear from that conversation – the teacher was not going to put her back in Pull-Ups.  I wished her the best and left, only to text her and check up a few hours later.  The reply message was vague, so it was clear I was going to need to wait until 6pm for the full details.

When I picked her up that day, the teacher told me that Greenleigh had 3 accidents that day.  Hmmm…that was better than I thought she would do.  Until she then had 3 more at home…2 of which were at the dinner table.  Yikes.  Internally, I reminisced about how convenient Pull-Ups are and contemplated going back.  I mean, she could technically wear them through college, right?  No harm in that.  I rationalized that as a perfectly fine option as I was changing Greenleigh into her pajamas, only for Greenleigh to look at me and say, “Panties?  Tomorrow?”.  What?  “You mean after 6 accidents, you want to try this again Greenleigh?”  She nodded and smiled.  She was hooked.

The next morning as I took her out of bed, she made a mad dash for her panties.  She sleeps for about 11-12 hours at night, so I had decided to keep her in Pull-Ups for naps and nighttime, but surprisingly she woke up dry.  We got ready without incident and were on our way to school in no time.  I’ll admit, I sped up the morning routine a bit this week.  Hey, it was the teacher’s idea, remember?  I’d like most of the accidents to be on her watch.

The next 4 days Greenleigh did remarkably well with just  one accident each day, and woke up dry each morning.  It was also over these 4 days that I learned that I’m not cool anymore.  Remember that fun song and dance I made up 6 months ago to make potty training fun?  Yeah, well, she’s over it.  So much so, that when she is about to go to the bathroom, she waves her finger at me and says, “No, woot woot potty.”  Only after I agree, will she actually go.  I thought my song was fun.  Apparently not.  For the record, it didn’t have the word “woot” in it once, let alone twice, but apparently that’s what she took from it.  As long as I promise not to sing it, she’ll go.  I guess it’s really a good thing that I never tried out for Idol, if my nearly 3 year old is begging me not to sing.  Better yet, she’s hinging her bodily functions on me not singing.

The 5 days at school passed all to quickly, and soon it was the weekend where I [gulp] had to clean up the messes myself.  Pull-Ups sounded so good.  No, no, I said to myself, I’m going to give this a try.  The first 5 days had gone remarkably well, said my inner pep talk.  I needed to give it a try.  Problem was, we couldn’t just sit at home and potty train all weekend.  We had a baby shower, gym class, errands to run, and maybe we would eat out once or twice.

Even with my nerves rattled a little about being all on my own (seriously, where was her teacher now?), Saturday went swimmingly well.  We must have gone to the bathroom 5 times in the span of 2 hours at the baby shower, but no accidents.  I did learn that it feels like an eternity to wait for someone else to go to the bathroom when you have a toddler who needs to go.  I swear what was probably 4 minutes, felt like 20 as we waited for the person in front of us to go.  But we made it through.

Today was the true test though.  We had to get through gym class.  Would she make it through?  I would just die if she peed on the floor there.  I know she wouldn’t be the first, but I just didn’t want it to be my kid that did it.  Greenleigh needs to go to the bathroom about once an hour.  By the time we got her up and ready, out the door, and to class 35 minutes away, she was going to have to go again.  But we were late.  There was no time to go.  We were going to have to make it to free play time, which meant she was going to have to be accident free for 15 minutes through circle time.  We were really pushing the limits.  I was freaking out.  Mainly because she wanted to sit in my lap and I didn’t have a change of clothes if she peed on me.  A chorus of, “please don’t pee on me, please don’t pee on me, please don’t pee on me” played in my head.  Oh yeah, and I was nervous for her, too.  Thank goodness we made it.  We got her to the bathroom with plenty of time and I finally started to breathe again.  Crisis averted.

The rest of the day went even better.  We made it through brunch, trips to 2 separate Best Buys (to cash in on that warrant we bought and replace her portable DVD player that she dropped one to many times), and a variety of other errands.  I may send a mean letter to Best Buy since they seem to find it hilarious to make the bathrooms as far away as possible (I’m convinced that whoever designed that store never potty trained a toddler), but we made it through the day accident free.  Scratch that, we made it through the weekend accident free.  How cool is that?  Well technically she hasn’t pooped in 2 days, which probably accounts for the lack of accidents, but I’ll take it.  She’ll poop eventually, right?  Hazeline attempted to make up for short comings in that arena though, so I suppose it all evens out.  The process is obviously far from “done”, but we had a great first week.

So these are the things I learned over the last 7 days:

• I underestimate how smart my child is.
• I am uncool, and so are my songs.
• My child might not have go to college in Pull-Ups…she might go with her pacifier, but not Pull-Ups.
• My husband is sometimes right.
• My child will do just about anything for a cookie.  And let me tell you, we have gone through a TON of cookies this week.