Winning the battle and the war!

This past Sunday as I said good-bye to my mom at the airport, I decided to give her the best present I could and get Sam potty trained by the time she came back at the end June.  Sam was now officially 3 years old and it was time to take the plunge again.  I thought how nice it would be for my mom not to have to worry about changing diapers when the kids went to stay with her.  It's the least I could do for the person who was willing to give to me a very much needed break.

As reported on December 26, 2010, (click here if you need a recap of just how bad it was), I had given it my all in attempting to potty train Sam once before.  Clearly she wasn't ready.  I can tell you that now with 100% certainty and I am very happy I put an end to the madness after just one extremely hellish day.

Fast forward 5 months and I woke up one morning (Sunday, 5/29) and decided it was time to dive into the deep end and give it a go again.  Eventually she'd have to get it, right?  The problem was, in all the attempts to get her to pee on the potty, nothing ever came out.  NOTHING.  NADA.  ZIP.  It was incredibly frustrating.  Sam just couldn't make the connection to peeing while sitting on the toilet.  Oy.

And, then finally, at 8:43am on Sunday morning, she peed on the potty for the very first time.  The look on her face was priceless.  It was a mixture of pride, happiness and a bit of surprise.  I had the same feeling, only also tearing up too because we were finally getting somewhere.

I know its not going to be easy.  I know that we have many, many more accidents before we are home-free.  But, after 4 full days of not wearing diapers (only at night, while sleeping), I am thrilled at Sam's progress. 

On Sunday we had 20 accidents, on Monday we had 10 accidents, on Tuesday we had 7 accidents, and on Wednesday, we had 4 accidents.  Yay!  And, there have been a few times when she told me on her own she had to go and it wasn't me just being an extra big freak putting her on the potty every 20 minutes.  I am of the mindset that your life doesn't stop when you are potty training.  If you have places to go, things to do, restaurants to eat at, you go and deal with the consequences.  Its important to establish a routine now and get used to walking into a place and immediately make a beeline for the bathroom upon entering and again, right before you leave. And of course, visiting it a few times in between.  My funniest incident I can remember (it's easy for me to laugh about it now), was when I started to potty train Ian and he ended up wearing Sam's burp cloth home because all my back-up underwear for him was wet.  Having 3 accidents during the 5 minutes I was getting my eyebrows waxed, completely depleted the back-up pile. It was hilarious and I am sure the ladies at Golden Nails was happy that they only see me once a month.  Life goes on and you hope that people are understanding.  I can proudly say that over the past 3 days we have now left Target, Glory Days, the drs office, and Safeway as dry as we found it.

It is nice to know that after 6 years, our days of wearing diapers are over.  It happened 5 months later than I expected, but I am ok with that.  Sam came into the world 5 1/2 weeks early and has been doing things on her own timeline ever since.