Potty Training 101

***Disclaimer: I'm not a potty training expert! This is just what is working for Anna and for us as her parents. I just wanted to share some of the resources we are using and how we've adjusted them to work best for us.***

It's hard to believe that our sweet baby girl is ready to bid farewell to diapers, but we're now in the middle of potty training (today is day 3) and so far, so good! I'm hoping that she will be completely diaper free by the time Baby P arrives in mid-March. At the rate she's going, it's looking pretty promising!

Anna is just shy of 21 months so we started a little earlier than most but rather than go by age, we went by other 'cues' that she was ready:

• Telling us when she needed changed
• Being able to tell us when she had to go ("Mommy! Potty!!")
• Showing interest in the 'princess potty' we got her from Amazon.com before we even started



We love this potty seat because it fits over the regular toilet and is easy to move between the different bathrooms in our house.

We decided to wait until after the holidays to begin the actual potty training because of all the travelling we did. Also, Anna is a little older and there are fewer distractions and trips to take at home.

We picked out her "big girl pants" at Target on Thursday. They're pretty adorable, plus they're "training pants" so they are thicker than regular underwear but don't feel like diapers. Pull-ups and training pants with the outer plastic lining still feel like diapers so toddlers will continue to treat them as such so using the training pants really drives home the point of "This is NOT a diaper!" The brand we found is Gerber and they come in a variety of colors and sizes. Unfortunately, the only in-stock size was 3T- way too big for our petite baby but with a few stitches on the waistband, they stay up pretty well. Dan picked up some 2T ones today from the Base Exchange and they fit much better!

We went with the training pants instead of the naked bottom approach (which many moms swear by) but we're only putting the training pants on her rather than putting pants over top of it. This is mostly for speed when it comes to getting her on the potty. Even though it's January, we're in Mississippi so it's still pretty warm and we're wearing lots of dresses out and sticking with t-shirts when we're inside.

We are using mostly tips from this helpful article on Instructables.com as well as some from BabyCenter.com. Here are the most important things we've implemented this weekend:

1. Dedicate a whole weekend to start potty training. This weekend worked well for us because it's a long weekend for Dan so 2 adults with their focus on one potty-training toddler.
2. Stick to uncarpeted areas for the first day. This is mostly for ease of cleaning up accidents! We blocked off access to our living room and brought several of Anna's toys into the kitchen/eating area. I made sure to have a few surprises for her to keep her interest- I bought markers for her new easel and we spent A LOT of time drawing together as a family. We also had many tea parties, built with blocks and Anna enjoyed running around our island.
3. Encourage dry/salty snacks to increase thirst a little. This helps the toddler become more aware of a full bladder and connect that with using the potty. Anna has always loved juice, milk and water so we didn't need to increase her thirst too much but the Cheez-Its and Goldfish definitely helped!
4. Set a potty timer. This took a little trial and error because we always seemed to miss Anna's potty time by a couple minutes resulting in several wet pairs of panties. However, once we fine-tuned it a bit, it was helpful.
5. Make trips to the potty exciting but not distracting. Anna is pretty patient but after several trips to the potty, she started getting bored and not wanting to sit there for several minutes. We've found that simple games (Itsy-Bitsy Spider, Pat-a-Cake, Simon Says) work well for the couple minutes before she actually goes. Bringing in toys (we tried her little toy piano) didn't work very well because she ended up just sitting there and playing- not going to the potty!
6. Praise is the best reward. While we did reward Anna with chocolate the first day for all successful trips to the potty, we're backing away from that already. She doesn't seem to mind and is delighted when we cheer for her after she goes. Time will tell how well it works but she is very proud of her big girl pants and I think that's enough reward for her.

Both articles that we are taking our tips from say not to take the toddler out of the house for very long in the first couple days which makes a lot of sense, but we like to go to church as a family so we took a leap of faith (along with several blankets, an extra set of panties and another dress in our bag) on Sunday morning. During church (a 1 hour service), Anna used the potty twice without incident. I was worried she wouldn't go without her potty seat but she did just fine while I held her up on the big potty. We also let her nap in her big girl pants and she woke up dry both times.

Every day has been an improvement and I'm hopeful that Anna will continue to grow in confidence as she gets to wear her big girl pants all the time. The Instructables article says to continue to use diapers at bedtime until they are accident free for 2 weeks. We're going to play it by ear. Anna wakes up dry pretty consistently but I think we'll see how the next few days go.