Adventures in Parenthood: Potty Training

I really did not want two kids in diapers at the same time, but I didn't want to push Clara into potty training before she was ready. Luckily Aba took the initiative and started potty training seriously July 10, 2015. She took Clara's diaper off and started asking her to go to the bathroom frequently. Up until this point we had been encouraging sitting on the potty and Clarita got an animal cookie (two - a pink and white one) first just for sitting, then for actually doing something.

Clara has never cared about being wet and if she has a diaper on will not tell us she needs to use the potty. She would hide to poop and if you asked her what she was doing she would tell you, "Don't talk, go in the other room." I tried letting her wear panties when she was first potty training and she peed in them all over the floor. Once she started going pantsless, she really seemed to get the hang of it. At first, Clarita was really good about telling us when she needed to poop, or just going and sitting on the potty. However, she usually had to be encouraged to sit on the potty to pee (I guess I never let her go a super long time to see what would happen if I didn't ask her to sit on the potty). Once encouraged she usually sat on the potty without complaint and when she peed she got really excited and said, "I'm doing it! I'm doing peepee!" She sometimes liked to watch it get poured into the big potty and flush, but if she was in a hurry to get back to her playing she would tell me to flush by myself. After a couple of days, Clara decided that she wanted to wipe by herself and would grab the toilet paper and actually do a pretty good job.

We had a couple of accidents. Once when she was throwing a tantrum right before bedtime and cried so hard she peed all over the floor. Another time she had gone poopoo twice without prompting and then I heard, "Uh oh Mama there's poopoo on floor." She had a little diarrhea and was concerned that she had not made it to the potty so I took that as a good sign that she was learning. We had another incident of crying so hard she pooped her pants and a couple of incidents where she pooped in the potty only to be followed by her saying she needed to go potty a couple of minutes later but not making it to the potty. She had super runny poop all of these times and I think she just couldn't make it to the potty.

Luckily, Clara has rarely gone to the bathroom while asleep. Even when she was a tiny baby she usually woke up dry. This made potty training easier because we just took off her diaper when she gets up and she sat on the potty. However, if she woke up in a bad mood (usually due to being woken up) she did not want to take her diaper off or sit on the potty and would cry and argue with me until I bribed her with something like her pacifier or cookies. This little girl is stubborn through and through!

I think she's finally potty trained after a month and we stopped using diapers at night or during nap time since she hadn't been wet for weeks. I'm sure there will be more accidents in the future, but I am very happy not to have two kids in diapers! Yay Clara!