The fun continues....

Potty training is all but complete now. I'm amazed at how quickly Alyssa caught on. I feel like we really didn't have to "train" her much. She just didn't like getting those underpants wet (and she refused to wear a diaper), so after about 2 days, she figured it out herself. She has the pee thing totally under control now.

But poop...that's another story. It's agonizing! We think she's holding it in which is making her constipated and making it difficult to go. So when it's time to go in the potty, she asks to go, but when we get to the bathroom, she starts crying hysterically and won't sit down. So I tell her that if she doesn't sit down and try, she has to put on a diaper. So she does one of two things...

1) She sits down for a couple minutes, screaming and standing up every time she feels like she's going to start going, then finally when I agree that she can have her big girl pants back, she goes back to playing for about 90 seconds, then starts crying and says she is pooping and needs to go sit on the potty. Thus starts the cycle all over again. This can happen up to 15 times in a 45 minute period, until either the urge to go passes or she ends up going on the floor or in her underpants. It's torture. Or...

2) When she asks to go but then cries and refuses to sit down, I literally WRESTLE a diaper/pull-up onto her while being beaten and kicked. This literally takes about 5 minutes, because she is frantically pulling and tearing at it the whole time, and I'm usually in tears by the end. Then I have to restrain her for a couple more minutes as she tries to rip the diaper/pull-up off and screams and writhes violently. I have seriously considered duct tape before, but I'd have to have 8 arms to get her taped up. She's strong and quick! Once she has accepted that the diaper is on for good, sometimes she will eventually poop in the diaper.

We are totally at our wits end over this. We cannot keep spending hours at a time going back and forth to the bathroom with a screaming child. We are losing our minds!!! She absolutely refuses to go back to diapers, and she's big enough that there's not much we can do to keep them on her if she doesn't want them, so that's not really an option. If any of you reading this have been down this road before, PLEASE share your advice!!!

Adventures in Potty Training

I thought Alyssa would be 12 by the time she decided to start potty training. She has been deathly afraid of sitting on the potty chair for months. But what self-respecting 2-year-old girl could resist the allure of brand new, flashy, brightly-colored Dora underpants with little ruffles at the waistband? So the day after Meijer's big Fruit of the Loom sale, off we went into the frightening but very exciting world pf potty training.



For Alyssa, wearing "big girl pants" is her sole motivation. The rule is that if she doesn't sit on the potty, then she has to wear a diaper. And it has worked beautifully! In less than 2 weeks, she is now accident-free most days and even keeps her diaper dry at naps more often than not! We're still not totally on top of the poop issue, and we haven't been brave enough to let her wear the big girl pants out in public yet, but we're well on our way! She even asked to go potty at Outback Steakhouse with no prompting at all last week.



As I'm sure he will do many times in his life, John is trying to follow in big sister's footsteps. John immediately took an interest in the potty chair too, and he has gone in it several times, though he is clearly not ready for actual potty training. But he demands to use the potty all the time, and he SCREAMS if I deny him this special privilege. This has led to much violence between the kids, as we only have one potty chair, and when you add in the fact that Jacob (one of my bonus kids) is also recently potty trained, there is often lots of conflict over whose turn it is, and I often feel like I spend half the day in the bathroom. So I let Alyssa pick out another potty online. She insisted on a pink potty for her, and she agreed that John and Jacob could have the blue potty that we already had. The pink potty arrived this week, and the kids couldn't be happier! These pictures of Alyssa and Jacob from this morning are just too cute for words!!!