That Was WAY Too Easy

BAILEY IS OFFICIALLY POTTY TRAINED!!!

Ahhhh, that feels good to say.  And I can't believe how easy it was.  We started Saturday afternoon and by Monday she pretty much had it down pat. I think the best thing we could have done was to wait until we did to train her.  She was 100% ready and it was pain-free for all of us.  Here's how we did it:

We took her out Saturday afternoon and made a big deal about letting her pick out her own underwear, a new potty just for her, and special candy that she could have when she went potty.  I mentioned in my previous post that she did wonderfully Saturday afternoon, and even went potty all by herself.  By Sunday, though, we were back to square one and I felt like there was no hope.  She didn't make it to the potty once on Sunday.  At times, I thought that she wasn't even trying.  But we stuck with it, and made her help us clean up any mess she made when she peed on the floor.  Same thing with changing out of her wet clothes and into clean, dry ones.  We helped her if she needed it, of course, but she did the majority of the cleaning up herself. 

Monday morning, she woke up dry but had another accident and I thought, here we go again.  But she surprised us all by going the entire day without a single accident...and she hasn't looked back.  It's now Friday and she hasn't had an accident since Monday morning.  She's able to go potty all by herself (pulling her pants and underwear down and then up when she's all done) and LOVES that her potty cheers for her when she goes.  During the day we keep her potty on the landing to go upstairs.  For naps and bedtime, we move the potty into her bedroom so that she can use it as she needs to.  When she pees in the potty she gets 2 Hershey kisses.  When she poops, she gets 3. 

I'm still a teeny bit hesitant for naps and bedtime, though, so we always put a pull-up on OVER her underwear when she goes to sleep.  Pull-ups give her a rash, so she can't wear them in place of underwear, but putting one on over top of them lets her feel if/when she has an accident and also keeps the mess we have to clean to a minimum.  I'm proud to say that we probably don't need to use the pull-ups since she's staying dry through the night.  But it's nice to have them, just in case. 

Scott and I are so proud of Bailey, and we still can't believe how easy the whole potty training process turned out to be.  Like I said, I think a huge factor in it being so easy was the fact that we didn't push her and we waited until she was good and ready.  She'll be 3 in June, so this was a perfect time for all of us.  She's done great!!