Smug update

Last week I started potty training my 3 1/2 year old. As I shared my feelings of inadequacy in the post “Smug no more”, I had to come back and update you all on our pee-on-the-pot status.

The first day was rough. Really rough. I mean, I briefly contemplated giving her away to another family that could love her and take care of her. After her very proud exclamation of peeing in the grass after I sat her on the potty for over 15 minutes with no results, she wasn’t done being stubborn.

I decided to play hard ball and make her nap without a pull up or diaper on. She wet her bed. In which I discovered she didn’t have a spare mattress pad cover and the mattress pad cover she does have isn’t a water proof one at that. Lesson learned: Have all necessary tools to successfully potty train.

The evening of Potty Training Day 1 was the worst. After my husband left to take our oldest to baseball practice I asked her if she had to go potty. She replied no of course, I mean what did I expect? Then she promptly walked over to her stack of books and she peed on them. All of them. New books, old books, good books and dumb books. Books we have had since my oldest was a baby. Books that I would rock him to sleep by.

That’s when I realized that this was going to be a long potty training road and I needed to lower my expectations and remain calm. I decided that many things were going to get ruined during this potty training road and there wasn’t much I was going to be able to do about it. That’s also when I realized that pregnant women shouldn’t be required to potty train kids because alcohol is required. Lots of it. 

The next morning (Potty Training Day 2) I woke up with this new attitude and things went surprisingly smoother. That’s when we had a breakthrough: She doesn’t want to be forced to sit on the toilet. She wants to go when no one is looking and then yell that she went. She is independent and strong, that one. So now she’ll go pee on the potty while we’re at home all day long. We haven’t had a pee accident since then as long as I give her the independent space she requires. We’ll see how it goes when we’re out and about.

Going #2 is a whole ‘nother story…