Most moms know, I'm sure, potty training sucks! It's hard on you, the child, your carpets/floors, laundry, pets (trust me Arwen is traumatized for life after this week) and your social life takes a serious dive for a while in the beginning too. Oh, and a heads up for stay-at-home-moms....don't expect your husbands to be too gungho in the help department. Sure Mac wants to help, but if I decide to switch something up, like the rewards to try to encourage Nixon to sit on the potty more often in the beginning, Mac kind of backed off with a "this is your show, you run it" attitude. Pretty much the story of most things in our parenting way of life, to be fair to Mac. It's not new, but I was just hoping since Mac has a penis and Nixon has a penis and since I don't have a penis with the common denominator being a penis, that maybe Mac would help out a little more. Afterall, what the hell do I know about tucking it when you sit or how to aim it when you stand??!?!? I mean I'd love to be able to pee standing up without dribbling it down my leg and into my shoe, but I can't.
So back in August...really, August already feels like forever ago!....I tried to potty train Nixon and for a few days it went awesome! But then Mac was home and due to this (common??) Alpha male bullshit battles and Mac forgetting Nixon is 2 not 12, Nixon stopped going on the potty and I decided to wait until Mac was working days again before trying to potty train Nixon again. It'd be less stressful for everyone if I could do it on MY terms (for the most part) with little to no input from Mac the first few days.
Well....Mac went back to day shift Monday. On Sunday we actually started by letting Nixon try wearing his Easy-Ups and get a reward from his Potty Reward jar (filled with M&Ms). On Monday we hit it for the full day. He had a couple accidents but did better than expected. Tuesday was okay. Wednesday and Thursday Mac was off and home, but Nixon still sat on the potty but only to get M&Ms, because I had upped his "nummies" to a couple, instead of one, for sitting since he was starting to refuse to sit anymore. This confused Mac and led to him getting frustrated by my rule changing (to be fair I would've too if he'd done it, but at the same time I knew Nixon was on a roll and I didn't want him to lose the momentum he'd made during the week, even if it meant giving in and handing over extra M&Ms just to keep his little ass on the potty longer!)
Mac went back to work Friday, and it was Nixon and I again. Nixon did okay in the potty training. He wore his Pull-Ups and Easy-Ups and used the potty a couple times. No accidents on the floor but no real forward progress. So a good day but not stellar day.
Then we had today. What can I say about today??? Ever had a day where you just smile because it was such an awesome day? Even if there were a couple times you almost puked? Or a day that really makes parenting worth it because you can see the pride and self-esteem just bursting out from every pore of your child??? And you know that you helped give him that pride by praising him for doing something awesome over-and-over-and-over again?? THAT was today!
First, the potty is in the living room (for now). So Nixon gets to watch his shows and sit on the potty. Well, today he was just running around naked and had wet 3 pairs of undies, REAL big boy undies, because he was too into the tv. So, I turned it off after giving him the usual 1,2,3 warning. When I hit 3 and he still hadn't sat down, off went the tv. I have NEVER seen him take his underwear off so quickly or pee as fast as he did when the tv was turned off. He stood up, said "ta da mommy!", grabbed the removable bowl, took it to the bathroom, emptied it in the toilet, flushed the toilet, washed his hands, put the little bowl back in his potty and sat right back on it all while I sang the "Nixon pee peed in the potty" song I made up just for him!
After that it was all uphill. Nixon sat on the potty unprompted the rest of the day. He peed at least a dozen times, pooped twice almost three times and only had one more accident before bedtime. I can not put into words how proud I was when I saw he let a really BIG poop go in the potty. (For moms who haven't gone through potty training, the pooping in the potty is scary thing for most kids and some don't go in the potty for a really long time) For this reward, no M&M would do! NO, he got a song, a kiss, a hug and a new car!!! Well a new toy car.
And before anyone asks....NO I did not take a picture of Nixon's first poop in the potty! I am NOT Kate fucking whackjob Gosslin, thankyouverymuch!
Here's hoping tomorrow continues as well as today went. Monday we're off to get Nixon more undies because it turns out he's out grown some of his already, so we're buying some plain white ones so I can iron-on some dinosaurs, since he wants dino undies and we can't find some reasonably priced ones.
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