Potty Like a Rock Star

I've been mentally planning my 2012 Resolutions/To-Do List over the past couple of weeks, but before I could really focus on what I want to do next year, I knew for sure what I didn't want to do anymore: change diapers!

Ellie is 5 months older now than Keira was when she was fully potty-trained, but we'd been holding off because I just dreaded the idea of it all: the spending hours upon hours in the bathroom, the cleaning accidents off the carpet, the frantic search for public restrooms, the toting along of the potty seat everywhere, the sound of my own voice asking, "Do you need to go potty?" every four minutes...ugh. Not my idea of a good time, especially when the holidays are already so busy! But, I had three weeks off and figured the sooner we started, the more likely it was that our little Bug would be a potty pro by the New Year, which was a VERY appealing prospect.

There are many potty training "methods" out there, but strangely enough, I--the researcher of all things, who must read every last amazon review before I'll order a product, and who has read practically every pregnancy and teaching book every written--haven't really tried to follow any of them. My "method" consists of reading lots of books about using the potty, dropping not-so-subtle hints about how much better a diaper-free existence is, and then one day declaring it to be Potty Day and putting Dora underwear on the kid with cheerful reminders "not to go wets or pooeys on Dora." (Sorry, Dora. They never follow those instructions.) The rest, we play by ear; my only rule is that there are no diapers during waking hours after that point, no matter what happens. Eeek.

The night before we officially started, I caught Ells going to hide n' poop and decided to put her on the potty seat and see what happened. Ms. Attitude was opposed to the idea, to say the least, and sat there with her arms crossed, glaring at me and yelling, "Nnnnno!! No potty! *pointing at the door* Go away, Mommy!"


Ooooooohkay. At that point, I pretty much braced myself for a nightmarish experience, and promised myself I wasn't going to stress about it even if the first full day was a total disaster...which it was. She sat there willingly most of the time, but had four or five accidents and no success. That's exactly how we started off with Keira, and she was done with diapers in three days flat, so I wasn't discouraged at all. Neither was Ellie:


(I tried really, really hard to resist taking or posting photos of this particular milestone, but the best I could do was to edit out any nudity. She's just too flippin' cute. Sorry, Future Ellie, but I wouldn't be your mom if I didn't embarrass you every once in a while.)

The next two days were much better, but we LIVED in bathrooms. You know how Harry Potter's "address" was The Cupboard Under the Stairs? Mine and Ellie's was The Bathroom Down the Hall. We'd sit there for an hour or more at a time sometimes, and I pulled out all the stops. I brought a bunch of Dum-Dum lollipops in and let her have as many as she wanted. We gave her the iPad and let her play on it to her heart's content as long as she stayed sitting...


...and when I got particuarly tired of camping out in there, I even tried out a little slumber party trick and let her put her hands and feet in a bowl of warm water to see if it would make her go. (It worked a couple of times!) Once, I even abandoned my whole "I don't need to use Santa to motivate my kids to behave" policy and told her that Santa brings an extra present if you go pooeys on the potty (which she did, so Santa brought her a jar of Tootsie Roll Pops). Hey, whatever works, right?

The good news is that she was able to hold it for long periods of time--sometimes 5 or 6 hours--so there were no accidents out in public, and the puppy training pad I put in her car seat was never needed (she threw it out with an indignant "I DON'T NEED THIS!!" on about the third day). During those hours, though, she increasingly became what I referred to as "a ticking time bomb made of urine," which, sadly, was detonated onto Grandma's floor during a brief visit on the second day. Sorry, Grandma!

By the fourth day, Ells had the whole thing figured out, and life was beautiful. She knew to tell us when she had to go, and she went as soon as she sat down--no need to forward my mail to the bathroom. Woohoo! It's been three days now since she's had an accident, and although she's still wearing a diaper at night for now, I bet it won't be long before she's done with that, too. She is, as we keep telling her, a total rock star.

Every rock star needs a fan club, and Keira has definitely been the president of Ellie's: she volunteered to fetch books and entertainment for her toilet-bound sister, told her, "That's okay, Ells--you're still a big girl like me!" when she had accidents on the floor, and still jumps up and down and claps every time Ellie uses the toilet. It. Is. Adorable.

So, whatever we Bears end up doing in 2012, we know that we will definitely NOT be buying, changing, washing (cloth), or throwing away (disposable) diapers. We're like Lloyd Dobler in Say Anything: "I don't want to buy anything, sell anything, or process anything." Forget New Year's Eve--I'm ready to throw a "We've Bought Our Last Box of Diapers" party right now!