Potty Training

Here are a few numbers for you to ponder as I begin to open up on my feelings on potty training, 8-2-1.

I never understood how hard potty training was until I attempted to teach my son to go to the bathroom on the big boy potty.  I think I would have better luck training my cat to go to the bathroom on the toilet than Ayden!  Audrey was super easy compared to this shenanigan.  Either that or I am burying my memories of Audrey's potty training experience.

My take on potty training is I don't want to push it and totally discourage Ayden, so I was going to wait until he was ready.  You would think if the kid picks out underwear and says he wants to be a big boy, that would be the sign he was ready to start.  But then again that would be obvious and simple, and we all know that this is not how my wonderful son works.

Saturday, Ayden decided he was going to wear underwear, so immediately my stress level went through the roof because I had to constantly follow him around to ensure there were no puddles being left on the floor.  He did great the first hour.  He let us know the pee was coming out and then sat on the toilet and went.  Yeah!  Until I went to put his underwear on and well the pee had come out in his pants as well.  It was okay though because he was feeling successful.  Not even thirty minutes later he had an another accident, but he was sure to let us know the pee came out.  At least he was getting that part right.  :)

We decided to go and get him some new underwear as his undies are from his cousin and they are great, but I was thinking getting new undies would be a great motivator.  I put a diaper on him for the trip, as I could envision his pee coming out all over my shirt as I held him.  Probably a mistake because it may be seen as going backwards, but I did what I had to do in the moment. Mickey Mouse was his choice and we came home with seven new pair that needed to be washed.  However I am not sure why we bothered washing them, as we went through a lot of underwear the rest of the day.

The pee kept coming out.  It was like clockwork that I would remind him to tell us when he needed to go to the bathroom, and we even had Audrey helping with the reminding and asking, but every time he was set on the toilet no pee came out or he told us he did not need to go.  Guess what?  Five minutes later, that pee came out!  At one point in time both Tyler and I thought he was purposely getting the pee out because he thought it was okay to pee in his underwear because we were changing them just as we change diapers.  However, I am going to pretend that is not the case and he is going to catch on.

Needless to say, in 1 day, we had 2 successful bathroom trips and 8 pairs of underwear to wash, there is where the numbers come into play. I know that we will continue to try and allow things to go at Ayden's pace.  Therefore if you see me in the next couple of weeks, I may be a hot mess or have a nervous twitch, but by golly I will keep going because those darn diapers are expensive!