Life Love & Aloha: You Know You Want to Hear About This

Warning: This about potty training. If you don't want to read it, don't. It's for the seriously funny memories of Claire...not at the time, but now it's funny.

It's been almost a month since Claire and I embarked on the most insane 3 days of our 2 years together. At this point I have decided I can talk about it and write it down so that I will remember this for round 2 with 2 more little girls. Since I found out we were pregnant with a baby..and then 2 babies...I decided I would not be having 3 little booties to cover up with a diaper! I had originally planned to do this in Texas with my mom as moral support and an extra set of hands, but then got to thinking that I did not want to take a new potty trained booty on an airplane for 8 very long hours! On to Plan B: We would start this craziness after Texas and our Aulani stay!

While in Texas I had sent Justin out for drop cloths to put on our crazy hard to clean Pottery Barn rugs. The night before we woke up to pure craziness I put the drop cloths down and covered them with beach towels so that when there were accidents, and there were, I could just pick up a towel and put another one down. I put out activities for us to do, put out her treats, and called it a night.

Day 1: We woke up and took off the last diaper. I put all the diapers in a bag and put them in the garage. I couldn't throw them away like the lady said. We slipped on some new princess undies from our stash of 30 pairs that include princess, Dora, Minnie, Ni Hao Kia Lan, and got breakfast going. I began my lines of the week "tell mommy if you have to potty" " are you keeping _____clean?". I literally thought my brain was about to explode at 8:45 from hearing myself say this. Our first accident of the day was right after breakfast and a large glass of milk. She started yelling and saying "uh oh"over and over. I scooped her up and ran her to the bathroom to finish going. We made lemonade, ate popsicles, lots of fruit, and never left each other's side! By nap time I was scared it wasn't going to work. She would start going pee and just scream "ahhh" but was so proud of herself when she got to call someone, got a sticker, or a Skittle! I sent her to nap time with no diaper or pull-up on. I just knew I'd be getting a wet bed and toddler, but 3 hours later she was still dry! We did the happy dance all over her room. The afternoon went a little better because of encouraging text messages and emails back and forth with people who had potty trained their kids already, but when Justin got home from work I decided there was no way she would make it through the night and went and got some pull-ups at Target. I was still at the very tired phase from the twins and getting up to change sheets at 1 am didn't sound appealing to me!

Day 2: We woke up and started the day out the same. Changed from night undies aka pull-ups to regular undies. I repeated the same thing I did on Tuesday roughly 950 times and I could already tell a difference. I won't lie though, I called my mom at about 8 and almost quit. I was so tired of repeating myself and day one wore me out. Entertaining someone at all times is hard work! We danced, played with paint, played with play dough, watched movies, read books, ran to the potty, drank some pink drink aka lemonade, ate popsicles, ran to the potty, ate skittles and M&Ms, and just waited for the accidents to start happening...but they never did! She was even dry after nap. There were no accidents on day 2 and by the end of day 2 I needed to see another adult.

Day 3: We repeated our morning from day 1 and 2. We got ready for a playdate at our house because I wanted to experiment with being "busy" and having to potty. Needless to say it went great. She did wake up wet from nap that day, but I partly blame myself because I gave her a glass of water 20 minutes before nap without even thinking. Other than that there were no accidents from the day!

Stats of Potty Training:

Day 1: #1 11 times, #2 1 time, 7 accidents
Day 2: #1 13 times, # 2 1 time, 0 accidents
Day 3: #1 9 times, # 2 0 times, 0 Accidents

Claire went back to daycare on day 6 and had no accidents! It's actually been really easy for her and I'm glad. I did send a crazy mom note in on the first day back that said "DO NOT PUT A DIAPER ON HER, PLEASE!!!"

Almost a month out and she is a very independent potty goer. Her newest lines "be right back, guys", "no stay away", and while jumping around "okay pee". She did fall in the toilet one night that she was having a very tired meltdown anyways. She didn't want any help from mommy so I walked away and told Justin to go handle that :) by the time he got in there I heard a splash and just about died laughing. She was screaming "I fell in the potty" while Justin came to her rescue.

My favorite sight is her little tiny booty in undies running around the house.