Potty Talk

I actually did a quite lengthy post on potty training on my other blog, but I wanted to record some of my potty memories here as well. I don't know why I'll WANT to remember this stuff, maybe so I can cheer myself on and say, "You can do this!" when I have to potty train Tyson.
The day we started potty training was the.hardest.day.of.my.life. Harder than finals, reading recovery training, writing my master's thesis.. maybe even harder than having a baby... at least they give you drugs for that. Potty training is so physically draining... running to the potty, cleaning up accidents. It's mentally draining.. am I doing this right? Should I do some research? But mostly, it's emotionally draining. That KID has just peed on the floor for the 3rd time in a row. Doesn't he know to use the potty? I can't sweetly encourage him to do it ONE.MORE.TIME!!! When I hit that point, I usually threw Logan on Greg's lap and left the room. Thank goodness for a patient and helpful husband!!
We used the Dr. Phil potty train your child in one day method. As I said on my other blog, unless Dr. Phil's Days are like The LORD's days... you know one day is like a thousand days... Dr. Phil is lying about the one day thing. However, all other aspects of his program seemed to work for us.
We got a doll that peed, put him on the potty, had a potty party. We did dances. We did stickers. And when Logan had an accident, I put him on the potty 10 times in a row to build muscle memory.
It's kind of boring to sit on the potty 10 times in a row. Even for a 2 year old who loves repetition. So, we had potty relays. We would run, sit on the potty, and run back. We also skipped, jumped, hopped, danced, twirled. It took a while to warm up to the potty, at first Logan would say, I don't like it. NO, NEVER! But after all the parties and dancing, he gave in and decided to like it.
After about a week, he would tell me when he needed to pee on the potty. He also was able to go out in public, keep his pull up dry, AND use the public restroom.
At first, Logan didn't want to poop on the potty. In fact, one morning he came and told me, "There a dirty diaper in the room." Hmmm, since Logan wasn't wearing a diaper (or any underwear) and Tyson can't take off his diaper, I had to go check it out. There was no diaper but it was dirty!!
The second time that happened, I remembered to pick it up and show Logan that I was putting it in the toilet. I showed him how to flush it away and he LOVED it. He thought it was so "cool" (his favorite word right now) that "The water clean it." He stood over the toilet and said, "bye, bye poop." Then he wanted to flush everything else down the toilet as well. So, the next time he had to go, he was super happy about putting it into the toilet and waving bye-bye. Since then he's been telling me when he needs to go and he's been going on the potty. We just started wearing underwear (yep, I let him run around naked!) and learning how to get to the potty and take the pants/underwear off in time. Next we have to conquer naptime and someday we'll handle bedtime... oh, and before he is 5, I'll try to be brave enough to take him out of the house without a pull up!!
What a journey this has been. I had a million reasons for NOT doing it but Logan was ready and I'm glad we did it. I hope he doesn't regress at any point but if he does, I'll just revisit this blog post and tell myself YOU CAN DO IT!