It's Potty Time - Day 2 Doing It My Way

So, after my last post I did a great deal of mommy soul searching. I realized that I was so stuck on making potty training work that I didn’t really set out a plan of how I was going to make it work. I just knew what I had read, advice I had gotten from others, and what baby center was telling me but didn’t know where I stood. To be honest I think I avoided taking a stand on how I was going to do because I didn’t want to deal with the back lash of others who maybe don’t see it my way (flash back to the “what do you mean you’re not going to breast feed drama from a few years ago).

So love it or leave here is my plan – I am going to focus on staying dry and using the potty the hours the girls are awake. Nap and night will come later when days are going well. When we leave the house we will use pull ups (go ahead and judge) but I can’t even wrap my head around the embarrassment I would have leaving a puddle in target, Costco, the mall, etc. The girls get a sticker on their chart for going potty and one on their hand if they sit and try. Every hour when the kitchen timer goes off they get one chocolate covered raisin if they are still dry.

With my new plan in place I thought about Day 1 and it hit me I gave the girls WAY TOO MUCH to drink. Everything I had read said fill them up with fluids to give them more opportunities to go. Might work for some kids but in essence what I did to my kids was give them “Drinking Bladder”. Now “Drinking Bladder” is something I use to have a lot in collage from drinking too much beer in a short amount of time. Ok, some might call that binge drinking but I called it my youth. Anyway, I would have to pee all the time with little notice because I was taking in more fluids then I normally did. Now while this never caused me to have an accident I do recall many alley ways around UW that I had to use as a pit stop because I could not hold it any longer. So I decided that normal liquids would be best and was ready to start my day.

For anyone keeping score Day 2 resulted in 1 accident and 3 potty uses. Both girls woke up wet at nap but I heard them over the monitor say “oh no I go pee pee” so they knew what happened and I am ok with that. We left the house tonight for dance class, dinner at Cici’s Pizza and a trip to Target for more pull ups and they stayed dry the whole time. In the end I learned that my girls are a lot like me they don’t drink a ton during the day and only have to go 2-3 times a day. When they start drinking in collage they will learn all about “Drinking Bladder” all on their own but I don’t plan on giving it to them ever again.