Potty Traing a 2 1/2 year Old

Oh what a long process this has been, but we have made progress, but we have more to do. I decided to start because Andrew is dry during his naps and during the night...and "they" say that is a indication that kids are ready.

Phase one: Little potty chair in the kitchen and one in the bathroom, Pull ups (when out of the house and doing the potty dance (skipping around dancing and singing "oh, Oh, the Potty Dance, Wew, Wew). Pull ups are just convenient diapers so these were NOT helpful at all considering he could pee in them and not care. At first he was wearing Princess pull ups (someone gave us their left overs) and I said we can't potty on the princess. Then because he is a boy, we thought it was fun to potty on the princess. Boy Pull ups weren't cool to him either. The Potty chair in the kitchen helped a lot, until about 3 weeks in he started to rebel. "They" said to stop for a month, so we did and it was good timing because we were going to FL and traveling and potty training is hard.

Phase two: Went cold turkey...no more diapers or pull ups. Andrew helped me up all of them in a big garbage bag, he watched me put them on the driveway and then saw the garbage men take them away. This is when the fun started and when my wash machine became my best friends.

We tried many things, and things that worked yesterday, didn't work today. We bought Thomas the Train Underwear (he has such a cute butt in the underwear compared to diapers), Elmo went potty and then Andrew went(worked for a day),He got to put Rice Crispies in the toilet after he went to hear them crackle, racing to the potty to see who could go first, lots of reading of potty stories, and a Thomas the Train Potty Chart in which he gets a sticker every time he goes and when the train is filled he gets a treat (fruit snacks, to read an extra book, for Daddy to take him to the park, etc). Even in Phase three this is still working. At one point he was very good at telling me when he had to go and we make it to the potty.

Phase Three: It's been almost 2 months now. He rarely tells me when he has to go, but when he does it is usually too late. If I am up on my game we can have a pretty successful day, but even so, we still have an accident daily There are days when he goes potty in his pants 3 times in a row and then goes poop in the toilet (He now wears one of my bracelets and with every bead we do a rhyme and that gives him power...it has actually been helping). Maybe he can only concentrate on potty OR poop at a time. He has now transitioned from a little potty to putting a small potty seat on the big one. He finds some crazy ways to go too (standing, squatting, squatting backwards, and sitting too)

Needless to say he is 2 1/2 plus 2 months old and we will continue to encourage and support him. He finally wants to be called a big boy. When we started he still wanted to be a baby. So I called him my big baby. There is a part of me who is done doing so much laundry, yet when he is finally potty training it will be like my little boy is truly a big boy.