Right. So. Remember when I said my kids were potty trained? Well…

Rebecca is doing great. A superstar. I can think of only one accident in the last week. She can hold it, she tells me when she needs to go, she isn’t freaking out about poop the way some kids do, and she is perfectly willing to use the travel potty when we’re out and about. No problemo.

And then, there’s Daniel.  Oh, Daniel.

Sigh.

If you follow me on Twitter, you’ll know we’ve had a very, very difficult week.  Daniel has gotten hit HARD by the terrible-two-and-a-halfs.  Much like when he went through this phase back in October, he feels the need to be contrary AT ALL TIMES.  He pitches a fit that he doesn’t want breakfast.  Then he pitches a fit that he wants oatmeal. And raisins. NO RAISINS! I WANT RAISINS! NOT ON THAT SIDE OF THE PLACEMAT!  And this is all before 8:30am.  It goes on all day long.  If I ask him something or offer him something, he has to say no. I go to put it away, and he demands whatever he just declined. He claims to not want to play outside, not want to go to a friend’s house, not want to go to Starbucks. Riiight.  Sure ya don’t, buddy.

Worst of all, this has spilled over into potty training.  He did so well the first week.  Not perfect, but really well. He’d have a tiny accident (like small enough that a change of undies was not really necessary), stop himself, ask to use the potty, and finish. Brilliant.  No longer.

For one thing, he seems to have tuned out from listening to his body.  Now he has a full-on accident, and THEN tells me he needs to use the potty. When we’re at home, when we’re out. All over the damn place.  And, of course, if I ask him if he needs to go or ask him to sit and try before we leave the house… well, you can guess what the response is. “I don’t wanna! I don’t need to use the potty!”  Five minutes later… new pants. Again.  And did I mention he’s a notorious incomplete-emptier? The kid goes about a tablespoon at a time. Ugh.

The kicker is that sometimes he does well. Sometimes he asks to use the potty before he goes in his pants. Sometimes he poops in the potty.  He is very capable.  But much of the day, he tunes out and/or refuses all suggestion.  And those who have been through this will understand how it simply brought me to tears on Thursday night. Exhausted. Defeated. Broken. Sobbing.

So, friends, where do we go from here on the potty front?  Re-boot-camp?  New incentives? Back off and put on Pull-Ups for my own sanity?  As a general rule, I want to be as consistent as possible and don’t like going “backwards.” But I would also like to not end up in the looney bin.

And as for the behavior – pick my battles and ride it out? Be extra strict and nip the attitude in the bud? Start drinking heavily?

At my moms of twins club meeting this week, I gave away my remaining stash of diapers. Pampers Cruisers are now gone from my house, and both kids are in underwear.

(cue heavenly chorus)

If someone asked me if my kids are potty-trained, I would say yes. Yes, they wear underwear. Yes, they do their business in the potty. Yes, accidents are more the exception than the norm.

The moms of young kids, of course, know all about the asterisks that qualify my ‘yes.’ They still require a lot of reminders. They can’t go by themselves. The bedtime Pull-Ups** are not always kept dry.  For right now (and the immediately forseeable future) it’s a MUCH bigger hassle than diapers ever were.

And seriously, sometimes having two newly potty-trained toddlers seems like it’s going to push me straight over the edge. We bolt for the nearest bathroom (or discrete corner, or back of the minivan) at the slightest mention of “mommy, I need to use the potty.” They fight over who gets to use the little potty and who uses the seat on the big potty (we have one of each in both bathrooms). Daniel is king of the false alarm and, ahem, incomplete emptying. Rebecca refuses to “try” before we leave the house, but has to go the minute we arrive at the grocery store. There are times when it is incredibly hard for me to stay positive and patient, and there are times when I fail to do so.

But, still, we’ve made it over that first big hump.  The diapers are gone, the undies remain largely dry, and the potty is in use.

For anyone wondering, I took much the same approach with Daniel as I did with Rebecca. Last Saturday, we put on the undies and ditched the diapers, cold turkey.  Daniel proved much more open to suggestion and would pretty much pee on command. A handy skill, and his only accident on the first day was right before bedtime. Hell, we even threw caution to the wind and went out to dinner!

The trick is, of course, that they actually need the accidents to start to learn to listen to their bodies.  The second day included a few more accidents, but also progress (i.e. a very small accident that then led him to finish peeing on the potty). Overall, I found this second go-around less tense and stressful than my weekend with Rebecca, I think because he could (and was willing to) go more frequently.  On the other hand, I found myself a bit more tired and a bit less patient. I just wanted this part to be over.

I’m glad I separated the kids and didn’t attempt to work with both in the same weekend. I think we benefited from the ability to focus, and had all four of us been shut in the house for that much time, we might have killed each other.

Truth be told, I really have nothing to complain about.  Both kids are reasonably reliable after only a very short period of time. Clearly, they were “ready,” whatever that might mean. That’s not to say there was a lot of talk of potty and all of that before we started.  They seem to just have been cognitively/emotionally/physically ready.  And so passes one of the last big transitions of babyhood.  My big kids.

**Yes, we are using Pull-Ups for naptime and overnight. I don’t really think of them as a useful potty training tool, but I was not willing to mess with sleep in the name of the potty. I liked making the switch to Pull-Ups so that we could, even just in name, be totally done with “baby” diapers.  We call them “night-time undies,” and while they aren’t always kept dry, Rebecca for one is quite distressed when she pees or poops in them during naptime. I take that as a good sign, and will try to ditch them for naps within a month or two.

Two weeks after the big potty boot camp weekend, and Rebecca is doing very well. She is asking, unprompted, to use the potty with great regularity, and it’s almost never a false alarm.  I can think of only one single pee accident this week.  She is even willingly pooping on the potty, though that seems to be the main accident culprit.  Alas, it’s a work in progress, and it’s going well.  We are back to our normal level of outings, and she is more than willing to use the travel potty when we’re out of the house.

Enter, the twin dynamic.

Daniel has always wanted to do whatever Becca was doing (sometimes much to her chagrin, and leading to many fights over toys, etc.).  Once he realized she was getting an M&M for successful potty usage, he wanted in.  As it turns out, the kid can pretty much pee on command for candy.  I suspect that skill will come in handy.

On the flipside, Daniel has most certainly noticed that any time Becca mentions anything to do with “potty,” we drop everything for her.  By necessity, she is getting a lot of attention and a lot of praise.  And I think it’s driving him bonkers.

Oh my lord, has he been whiny this week.  Whiny and clingy, with a huge helping of attitude and sass.  On Monday, I thought it was just that he was punishing me for leaving for the weekend.  But the more I think about it, combined with a whole lot of extra “pick me up” and “can I sit on your lap?” and clearly the kid is feeling starved for attention.

I feel bad, of course.  Especially when home by myself with both kids during the day, it’s next to impossible to give quality one-on-one time to either of them.  And, since we’re still in a somewhat fragile state of potty-trained-ness, I do have to pay pretty close attention to Rebecca.  When you add in that her behavior has been much better than his, you can do the math on who’s getting the lion’s share of positive attention from mom this week.

Well, buddy, all that is about to change.  This weekend, it’s your turn.  You and me, one-on-one, all weekend long.  All the attention, all the praise I’ve got, is going to you.  Potty training boot camp, take 2.

I’m pretty exhausted just in anticipation, but I have reasonably high hopes that at least the pee-on-command bit will come in handy.  And here’s to hoping all of that attention will help to turn his behavior around.  Either we’re going to have a great weekend, or I’m going to want to kill him.

Things I have used to bribe/entice/reward my daughter for using the potty in the last five days:

• M&Ms
• Games on my iPhone
• Books
• Songs
• Congratulatory phone calls to
  • Daddy
  • Grandma
  • Grandpa
  • Aunt Rachel
• Pennies (for her “collection”)

We may be turning a bit of a corner, in that she has finally started telling me that she needs to use the potty. It is often a false alarm, but I’ve been praising her and thanking her for telling me, even if there’s no actual production.

Our first trip out of the house yesterday afternoon was not terribly successful.  We went to a playdate at a friend’s house, but it turns out to have been the most gargantuan playdate yet.  Our previous record for number of kids was 12, but yesterday was a whopping 18 kids, all but one under the age of 3.  It proved to be a bit much for Rebecca, who had two small and two larger accidents in quick succession.  She was clearly sort of trying to hold it, but also wouldn’t release when I scooped her up and sat her on the potty. Alas, work in progress.  And despite bringing a few changes, she rode home with no pants.  What can you do…

This morning, however, was much better.  She had a spontaneous ask-to-use-the-potty moment that, when I let her play a game on my phone in an effort to keep her on the potty for more than 3 seconds, actually resulted in success!  Yipee!  We then had a totally dry trip to music class (with one false-alarm potty request, and yes, I had the travel potty set up discretely in the corner), and followed it up with an accident-free stop at Starbucks.

Someday, I promise, I’ll stop writing about potty training…

O hai.

Guess what? Potty training hasn’t killed me! I’m not sure I yet believe that it has, in any way, made me stronger. But I’m not dead yet.

As I talked about on HDYDI today, we went for the cold-turkey approach with Becca.  I more or less followed the advice given in the 3-Day Potty Training eBook.  Saturday morning, we said goodbye to diapers and put her in underwear.  I was then glued to her side for the next three days.

Holy shit, is that exhausting.

So, I kind of pride myself on having fairly independent kids. While I’m obviously with them all the time, we get out to a lot of classes and activities where they can do their own thing. I don’t usually spend an entire day attempting to entertain them.

In order to really devote my attention to Becca, I sent M out with Daniel for as much of the weekend as possible.  M did a great job, took Daniel all over the place, and they really had a great time. I think it was a nice weekend for both of them, and I was glad to not have any extra distractions. I highly recommend doing the same if you find yourself trying to do potty boot camp with one kid and not another.

We did pretty much whatever she felt like doing. Stamps, finger painting, puzzles, books, an extra episode of TV here and there.  I really wanted to pick my battles selectively and not get into too many avoidable discipline situations, so it was kind of anything-goes for activities.  As long as it involved staying in the house.

Anyways, if I tell you the first day by the numbers, it won’t sound so bad: one success, three or four accidents.  Yep, that’s it.  My girl can, and does, hold it.  I suspect that, in the long term, this will prove to be a very good thing.  But in trying to train her, it doesn’t provide a lot of “teachable moments.”  It’s a lot of waiting, waiting, waiting… staring… asking… suggesting… building tension… and then an accident.  So, while there was not a lot of clean-up to deal with, there also was no sense of learning or progress.

And I had a wicked knot in my shoulder and tension headache. Apparently you hold your head in a weird position when staring at a 2-year-old all day.

Day two was, in a word, frustrating.  Again, she can hold it for hours, so it’s a lot of waiting for a single event. Still, not a lot of messes. But also not many chances for success and reinforcement.  It was particularly frustrating as I watched her squirm and dance around and stall and distract and delay around lunchtime, when I knew she needed to go. She sat on the potty several times, to no avail.  Forcing her to stay put seemed like the wrong approach, but as soon as she was happily playing with trains… accident.  Argh.

In the meantime, she was clearly a little stressed by this big transition, and/or had picked up on the fact that I was trying to choose my battles.  Her behavior went, pardon the expression, down the toilet. Sass, attitude, throwing things, grabbing things. I went back to our usual counting of poor behavior and things got a touch better.  But a late-day accident sent her into over-dramatic wails.  In a sense, I was sort of glad to see that having the accident bothered her, but the histrionics were really not what I was in the mood to deal with.

At the end of day two, I was beyond tired and frustrated and wanted to throw in the towel. After a little time to space out and cool off after the kids went to bed, I talked it over with M and we agreed that this is a no-going-back kind of approach. If we give up and do diapers again, we lose our credibility for the next time. Best to just suck it up.

Going into today, day three, I was both steeled and nervous. No longer could I send Daniel off for the day with M, so now I had both kids cooped up in the house for another day, only one of whom was potty training.  But we may be on the upswing.  Morning had two successes and no accidents.  The naptime Pull-Up was dry (yes, we’re using Pull-Ups for nap and bedtime).  There was a late-afternoon accident that I tried to prevent but didn’t quite make it, and then another success before bedtime.  Three-to-one, the balance swung back in the right direction. Plus, the kids could entertain each other, so I could simply supervise much of the time instead of constantly playing cruise director.

Still tired, but spirits improving. I hesitate to call it an unqualified win, as all of today’s successes were led by me. I have yet to have her just stop, tell me she needs to use the potty, and then do so.  It’s been a lot of me watching her for signs of pausing, agitation, or other clues that she needs to go.  Sometimes she’ll decide to give it a shot, sometimes not.

That said, I declare Rebecca done with diapers. We aren’t going back. It will continue to be a work in progress, obviously, but she is now in underwear during waking hours.

And, so help me God, we are leaving the damned house tomorrow.  All of this staying in goes completely counter to my entire parenting ethos.  Playdate, here we come.

I’ll bring a change of clothes.

I’m really just piling it on deep, this week.

We had a houseguest all week. A very nice, low-key friend, but an extra soul in the house nonetheless.

I had a nasty head cold.

A friend needed someone to watch her kids for most of the day, Wednesday. They’re friends of ours, and we go to the same music class on Wednesday morning, so I happily volunteered. At just before 7AM, I welcomed another pair of 2.5-year-old twins into my house.  I fed all four of them breakfast, took them all to music class, and then took them all to Starbucks (because it was cleaning-ladies day and I had to keep them out of the house).  I fed them all lunch, and miraculously got them to all take a nap at the same time.  And then wanted to fall down, dead.  They were all well-behaved and, despite my van resembling a clown car, the day went well. But holy crap was that exhausting.

Thursday, we went to Trader Joe’s and I decided to let the kids push their own carts. Daniel tipped his over five times, splitting his lip and prompting the nice manager to ask if I wanted a bag of peas for his face.  Instead, we got balloons. Which they spent the rest of the day fighting over.

Friday, I took the kids (by myself) to their first dentist appointment. As expected, Daniel was super outgoing and cooperative, if a little wriggly. I had made the appointment out of a concern for Daniel’s bite (turns out his front teeth simply do not come together when he bites down). Dentist says it’s a result of him chewing on his blanket, and will resolve itself when we get rid of the habit, which she didn’t seem to think was of immediate importance.

Rebecca talked a big game about it when we were at home.  Got to the office and she didn’t want to leave the lobby. Come to her turn in the chair and she had a complete freak-out.  At least when she’s crying, her mouth is open. So as long as I held her forehead in the right direction, the super-kind hygienist was able to do a quick teeth-cleaning.  It was great.

But, you know, I’m really not quite exhausted enough.

Tomorrow morning, M is going to leave the house as early as he can, and take Daniel to the museum. Because Becca and I are having potty-training boot camp this weekend.  That’s right. Cold turkey. Goodbye diapers. We’ve got the undies, the potty seat, and the M&Ms.  Wish me luck.

And if you don’t hear from me by Monday night, send a St. Bernard with a barrel of whiskey or something. I’ll be the one passed out in the corner.

LauraC has a fun new feature going on, using our Phone Photos! Thought I’d play along and give the great potty update all at once.

Not shockingly, I kind of chickened out on Potty Boot Camp.  I’m just not committed enough right now, can’t psych myself up to do it, so I’m not pressing the issue.  If the kids say they want to sit on the potties, which they are still doing from time to time, they are welcome to do so, but I’m not really bringing it up.

On the one hand, we had a setback.  What I neglected to mention about the first time I did my exercise while they were up was that they decided they wanted to sit on the potties while I was working out. Fine, no biggie, go for it.  They sat for a bit, then got distracted and wanted to get up and walk around.  I decided to let them go au naturel for a few minutes, and kept reminding them that if they needed to pee, the potty was right there.  Well. Apparently I neglected to include suggestions for poop, because a few minutes later, I had some gifts on the floor of the playroom. Charming.  Eew, eew, eew. Good thing I still have a super-sized bottle of Nature’s Miracle from when we were housetraining the dog.

Then, today, we were in the car and very nearly home when Rebecca started announcing that she wanted to poop on the potty.  Fine! Great! Got home, put both kids on the potties and turned on a bit of Backyardigans while I went to get some dinner ready (they currently have a major potty/TV association that I’m not sure what to do about, but oh well).  Next thing I know, not only had Daniel proudly peed in his potty, but Rebecca got up, smiled, and there was POOP!  POOP IN THE POTTY!  WOOT!

I know. I’m sorry. Moms of toddlers talk about poop, it’s just how it goes.

Anyways, there was much rejoicing and high fives and all of that.  Wohoo!  I’m still not pressing the issue, but I’m glad they continue to show an awareness and understanding of the process.

Now, I’m off to order another super-sized box of diapers. We’re almost out.

Out of the clear blue sky on Sunday, both kids came home from a grocery store outing with daddy and demanded to sit on the potty.

I bought two potties back in May when Rebecca first started telling me when she was going to poop.  The kids loved them. They were nuts about them. Just wanted to remove every stitch of clothing and sit on them while watching an entire episode of Sesame Street.  Of course, not a drop or speck of anything but dust ever accumulated.  And they would get up and trade potties. And fight over the (identical) potties.  I decided that I wasn’t ready, and we put the potties away.  Every now and then the kids remembered they were there, but I think they just decided it was a nice place to sit while watching TV in the buff.  Great.

And then there was Sunday. Unprompted demand.  And of all the damn things… there was production! Holy moly, I hardly even knew how to react.  Much clapping and fussing and all of that.

And then it happened again.  A number of times, as a matter of fact, over the course of the last few days, still completely unprompted by me.  One or both of them will announce that they want to poop (or pee) on the potty, down they’ll plop, and frequently there will actually be some pee (not as much on the poop front, but it’s an attempt).

So here’s the question: do I suck it up and go for it? I know this kind of potty interest can wax and wane in toddlers, do I take advantage of an interested period?

I read the 3-Day Potty Training Method, and the rip-off-the-band-aid approach that it advocates (among other smart tips) resonates pretty strongly with me. While I know it’s not nearly so simple as “three days and you’re all done,” I do like the idea of just going all out.  I’ve been thinking about it for a couple of months, and have decided I’d really like to do this before they turn 3. But as I have no interest in potty training over the winter (cold = more clothing = indoors = no thank you), my thought was that I’d either have to jump on this soon, or wait until the spring.

I hesitate mostly for my own convenience, truth be told. Because I know that not only will those initial days (in particular) be challenging and frustrating, but that my life and our outings will get significantly more complicated for at least some period of time. Slower to get moving, more care to be taken during long outings, and more crap to haul around (extra clothes, maybe a spare potty in the car, etc.) when I had gotten used to just throwing a diaper or two into my purse.

But, then, I get the sense that there are more challenging times ahead (2.5, anyone?), and that it’s not necessarily that much easier to train an older child.  And in the end, I’d rather have this done sooner than later.  But does that mean “now”? Yipes!  Well, I suppose we have no classes or activities next week… am I ready??

And thanks for the comments on my bath time post, good to know I’m not alone. Rebecca is doing great, Daniel is having a rough time. Finally got his second sticker last night, on night five. Alas.

All mom blogs need to go there eventually, right?  Well, here’s a poopy post for you (not too graphic, I promise).

Rebecca is all about the word “poop” right now.  Except, here’s the thing…. she’s started using it 5-10 minutes before she poops.  Twice so far today.

I’m a little afraid…. should I jump on this opportunity and explore the idea of potty training?  I mean, she’s only 21 months old.  But if the opportunity is presenting myself, I’d hate to miss a good window.

I don’t have any potty supplies in my house, of course.  No potty seat.  No ring for the big throne, and she’s such a teeny thing that she’d fall right in if I tried to just plop her on there.

Moms of kids older than mine, what do you think?

…

See, as poop posts go, that wasn’t so bad…