Potty Training

 I seriously think potty training 2 toddlers is worse than having 2 newborns! It's horrible! They don't want to listen to me in the first place, so why would they want to go to the potty every 20 minutes when I tell them to? They would rather wet all over themselves then listen to me! That's frustrating!

 

What's also frustrating is reading all kinds of crap on Pinterest about how you can potty train in 3 days. Yeah right! Well, I fell for it, for 2 days. And I felt all kinds of pressure to get this done before I go back to work because when else am I going to have 3 days in a row off to do it?

 

 So I decided to try it last week when David was going out of town because that way I wouldn't have to get them up and ready for school and load all 3 up in the car to take them to school.

  I made a chart, I got stickers, I bought their favorite character underwear, and I got prizes. I was prepared. WRONG. I wasn't prepared. My world was shook upside down and I was exhausted, fast, like in the first hour and a half!

 

Day 1 was terrible. My method was to just put the underwear on them and make them go potty every 20 minutes. And if they went, they would get a sticker or a prize, I really didn't have a method there. So then it just turned into them wanting prizes and they would make themselves go potty 2 or 3 times in a row to get more prizes. Which was fine, but I was spending all my time in the potty and I still had a newborn to feed and take care of (that's colicky by the way...).

I just kept thinking..."why did I do this to myself?!?!" But I pushed through. I knew it was going to be hard, I just didn't think this hard. And it was only the first day so I had to give it a chance.

Connor was actually doing better than Chloe. He would listen to me when I would say it was potty time and he would run and pull his underwear down and climb up on the potty. I had him start facing backwards so he could see his pee pee and that's what worked for him. That and he was motivated by the stickers. But just as one was on the potty, the other would be standing right next to me peeing all over the floor. I just couldn't keep up with them.  And don't get me started on the poop situation.  Neither one of them went poop the first day and I could tell it was affecting Connor. 

 

Day 2 was worse than day 1. We had 7 pee accidents and 1 poop all before 9:30 am. I was frustrated. I was angry. Why wasn't this working? Everything I read said that on day 2 I would be able to take them out of the house for a short time in their underwear, but I couldn't even make it out of the bathroom! And I was tired of cleaning up messes. We finally headed out to the back porch to play and I just moved the little potty out there. That way, they could at least see it and try to make it there in time.

That afternoon, I think we had even more accidents, I can't remember honestly. It's a blur. But we decided to stay inside to watch a movie so I had to put them on water proof pads!

It's like they were leaking! And I wasn't even shoving water down them like everything I read said to do! I honestly think the air from having the underwear on made them go more than normal.

 

  I was over it by that night. I cried to David on the phone about how I never want to do it again. And that I didn't care if they went to kindergarten in diapers! I'm not cut out for this crap! I was angry and frustrated with them and I didn't want to be that way. So I thought long and hard about giving up that night and just letting them tell me when they were ready.

 

On day 3, I got the kids up and asked them if they wanted to use the potty or if they wanted to put a diaper on and they both told me they wanted to use the potty. I switched from underwear to pull ups but kept the same plan of taking them to the potty every 30 minutes or so. We played outside and laughed and just got back to normal instead of living in the boot camp I had created.
And guess what happened...Connor had no accidents all day long and wore the same pull up all day and Chloe only had 2 accidents and 1 of those was during naptime, which I don't count yet.  So Day 3 was our best day by far.  They do so much better in pull ups and it's better for me too because I'm not constantly having to be on top of them and I just take them to the potty frequently so they get more and more used to going.
Connor usually wakes up in the morning and his nap dry, so that's a huge step.   

 

So no, my kids aren't potty trained. I couldn't do it in 3 days and for those that can, more power to you! But we're doing it our own way. We're in pull ups and on most days Connor will go the whole day with no accidents and Chloe will only have one or two. So that's progress to me. They have also just moved up to a new class at school that will help potty train them and I will be getting a more detailed report about how they do during the day but it's not a perfect situation.  There are a lot of kids in the class and I understand that they can't get everyone to the potty every 30 minutes unless the child tells them they need to potty, which mine don't do yet.

It's okay that my kids are 2 1/2 and not potty trained. I feel like, as a mother, a lot of pressure was put on me to have them potty trained by a certain age and I'm over it. Judge me all you want, but I think they are still young and if they were ready then it probably would have happened on day 2, but obviously sitting in wet diapers doesn't bother them. I know it will happen, eventually, and when it does it will be amazing to not have to buy diapers, but until then, we will just keep trying our best.