Potty Training (g style)

Just in case you have not heard...g is fully potty trained. I would like to say record time but I think that honor still belongs to D (S's son) who was potty trained in a day. g potty trained herself really.

Finally at 22 months, g decided to potty train herself. Gmom had been on a campaign to potty train her since she turned one. Aside from the physical impossibility of that, I really didn't think she was ready. Why physically impossible? The "official" definition of potty trained is being able to "say" or know that she needs to go to the potty, toddle to the bathroom, pull down her pants, do her business, wipe herself clean and pull her own pants back up. At one, she had just learned to walk and wouldn't have the balance to bend down and clean herself much less pull up her pants without tipping herself over.

Anyway, fast forward to 22 months, we have been doing a small campaign to convince her to go to the potty for a few weeks. She was never interested though. She has gone to the extent of even holding it until we put the diaper back on. This went on for a bit until we went on a trip with K's family. A, K's son, has been potty trained for a while. g noticed while they were playing that A wasn't wearing a diaper and K told g that she should tell me when she needs to go and that she doesn't really need a diaper. She took that comment and pondered.

She repeated that phrase for a few days. She also made a connection with Ikea's ball pit. There's a policy for that play area that everyone in there should be potty trained. So we have been trying to play this card for a while but she didn't seem to care much. Now she put K's comment and Ikea's ball pit together. Within days of our return from that trip, I decided that maybe she was finally ready. We used the pull-ups for a day until I realized that she treated the pull-up like a diaper. So that night, we went to Target to pick out underwear. She chose a Dora and an Elmo pack.

The next day we went cold turkey. She chose the elmo underwear. We expected that we would have to do a load of laundry every day, but in fact, she went to bathroom from the first day onward.

She has had a few accidents, mainly during wake up time first thing in the morning. Sometimes she doesn't quite make it and would drip a little but on a whole, she went in the potty for both #1 and #2 within a week.

YES!!!!