Keeping Up with the Buckners: Potty Training

St. Louis got blasted with 10+ inches of snow a little over 3 weeks ago, so Rian and I took advantage of being snowed in and decided to potty train Hailey! We took the "cold turkey" method: just switch her into underwear and see what happened...

She received some Dora undies for her 2nd birthday last June and they've been hanging out in her drawer since then. She knew what they were and tried them on from time to time, so she was super excited when we told her it was time to wear them for good!

In anticipation of this event, we went to the library and got some potty books for her to read as well as a package of Pull Ups for naptime and overnight. We also got some apple juice {which is a super special treat!} to help keep the liquids flowing!

First we had her help us "throw away" all the diapers in the house (meaning, put them all in a big trash bag and put them in the garage). So then we said "we don't have any more diapers! we just have to wear our big girl underwear now!". We set her on the potty and gave her a sippy of some juice and read her the potty books until she did her first tinkle {that's a funny word to write...}. This particular potty chair has a sensor and says "you did it!" and sings an annoying song about toilet paper every time liquid hits it. So we all got really excited for her and she got her first treat - 1 M&M! From then on the method was supposed to be that we set a timer for 20 minutes and then set her down again and wait for her to go. Well, she was so excited to do this that she didn't want to get off the potty at all! That ended up working out in our favor because in the first 30 minutes she tinkled about 4 or 5 times!

Eventually she got off the chair and we were able to start setting timers, but she wasn't really making it to 20 minutes on that first day. It took a few accidents and underwear changes to see that she was really going every 10-15 minutes! We kept her confined to the kitchen to avoid accidents on the carpet, and that was certainly a good decision on those first few days. We brought lots of toys and books and activities to her to make her time in the kitchen less boring. We also let her rent some Angelina Ballerina DVDs from the library to watch in the kitchen as well. Day 1 potty total was somewhere around 20 tinkles on the potty and 4 accidents.

We only set timers for the first 3 days, and after that she was doing great with running to the potty whenever she felt she needed to. She was still having a few accidents each day, so we kept her confined to the kitchen for about a week and I would say that by 10 days in she was fully potty trained as far as "tinkle" was concerned.

It's now been 3 and a half weeks and she {just yesterday} gave in to going "#2" on the potty as well. We had some issues with that for the first few weeks, which is totally normal, but she finally understands that "poo poo belongs in the potty". I think the fact that she gets 3 treats for a poo is helping out as well :)

I'm so proud of my girl. I wasn't sure how it was going to go, but I suppose I shouldn't have doubted her. She is amazing!