Potty Training Boot Camp!

Friday, April 17th
Kids are informed that as of tomorrow, they will NO longer be wearing diapers during the day. They seem OK with what I am telling them. However, I am guessing they had NO clue as to what I was telling them.

Saturday, April 18th
The kids get up around 7am and I again tell them that they are NO longer wearing diapers during the day. Brooke tells me that she doesn't want to wear underwear. TOO BAD! Potty Training Boot Camp has officially started!

I did some research a bit earlier in the week and found a wonderful little ebook online. It's from the potty training expert. It basically prepares the parent/adult who is going to do the potty training and it has the child going to the bathroom every 20 minutes. You set a timer and when it goes off, the child knows. I am here to tell you, this method TOTALLY worked for us. I came down and set the timer and every 20 minutes, the kids were on the potty. At first I gave them a teddy graham if they sat on the potty and a fruit chew if they actually went pee in the potty in addition to a sticker on their chart. At one point, I gave them a small container of cranraspberry juice. BAD IDEA! From about 10am - 11am, I was chasing pee pee EVERYWHERE! It was nightmare. Once we got rid of that, we had lunch and I put both of them down for a nap. At this point, Brooke was telling me that she had to go to the bathroom. Low and behold, they both made it through naptime without peeing in their underwear. Things definitely were awesome after naptime. I actually even took them to Target to get another toilet seat adapter for Kyle for upstairs. I set my phone for 20 minutes and by this point, they totally know when the timer goes off that it's potty time and they even yell it.

I am so surprised that the kids are so good at this and that it is so much easier than I had anticipated. I think I made this potty training thing out to be a monsterous task and was just not quite up for it until now. My main motivator was the kids going to school this next fall. In order for the kids to go to pre-school, they have to be potty trained.

Sunday, April 19th
Steve comes home from work and is amazed that the kids are doing so well with using the potty. We go the ENTIRE day without an accident and Brooke is telling us quite frequently that she has to go potty. Again, we venture out to Costco with the entire family and again we set the cellphone. We do our major shopping trip and don't have any accidents. We are religious with the 20 minute deal and the kids are doing really well. What a breeze!

We are now on day 7 of potty training and it is still going really well. I still put a diaper on the kids during the nighttime but they are already to the point that they want NOTHING to do with a diaper. They actually cried the other night because we put diapers on them. I am so glad this was not the monsterous task I was making it out to be. Brooke is actually doing so well that the other night I was on the phone with my girlfriend getting a salad recipe when I heard her come back up the stairs telling me that she went pee pee. Here she is in her Thomas shirt with nothing else on coming up the stairs. She knew she had to go so she went downstairs, took off her pants and undies and sat up on the toilet all by herself. These 2 never cease to amaze me. We couldn't be more proud of them. They are growing up so fast right before our eyes!