Heather's Guide to Potty Training

1. I do not change 3-year-old's diapers. Grant it Henry is barely 2, but on the advice of a friend, I did not want a baby of any age while trying to potty training a toddler.
2. I do not want 2 kids in diapers.
3. Lots of people said that Conference is the best time to potty train.  So I decided to start Conference weekend.  Not a good time to start.  It's hard enough to listen to Conference while entertaining 3 kids, and then try to add taking an unwilling toddler to the potty every 10 minutes.  Didn't happen.

And so on the Thursday night of Spring Break, I started the potty training of Henry.

Having potty-trained 2 children before this, I knew that no matter what the books and Pinterest say, potty training cannot be done in a day or even 3.  So I came up with the Heather Baker potty training method.

Step 1: Acknowledge that potty training sucks, is messy, and takes months.

Step 2: Get the kid to sit on the potty.  Thursday night, Saturday and Sunday (we took Friday off because we were camping), I focused on getting Henry to just sit on the toilet.  Every 10 to 15 minutes, I took him to sit on the potty.  Every time he sat on the potty he got a piece of candy.  We also sang a lot of songs so he'd sit there long enough for pee to come out.  We got teaspoons in the toilets and buckets on the floor but remembering step 1, I just cleaned it up.

Step 3: Magically catch the kid while peeing on the potty.  Monday evening, I was starting to get a little frustrated and was loosing hope.  Henry just didn't seem to be getting it, which was annoying because he can count to 12 and has the largest vocabulary of any 2-year-old I know.  And then, by some miracle, I caught Henry just as he was about to pee and got him to the potty before he peed all the way.  Then he started peeing on the potty and we watched and he figured out how to make himself pee.  It was glorious and just the break through we needed.

Step 4: Just keep going.  Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday I worked on potty training myself.  As in, remembering to take Henry to the potty every 15 to 30 minutes.  I'm getting pretty good at it.  Still not good enough.

Step 5: Well, this is what we're working on now: rewarding Henry with a piece of candy every 30 minutes if his underwear is dry and making him clean up his pee every time he has an accident.

Step 6: Somehow I've got to get Henry to poop in the potty.  Unfortunately, he likes to poop in morning before I get him out of his crib, or right after his nap.  On the bright side, I haven't had to scrape poop out of underwear yet or off the floor.

Little by little, we'll get there.  Hopefully Henry will take himself potty by the time the baby comes.

One slightly amusing potty training story: Wednesday or Thursday, after his nap, I took Henry's diaper off and forgot he's supposed to be potty training so got out another diaper.  Then I remembered.  So I went to get some underwear instead, Henry followed me crying, "I love diapers!" and tried to put it on himself.  I managed to get him in underwear and we made it through church today with only slightly moist underwear.