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| Ansley-Pants and Miss Paige after a long day playing! |
Flashback to October 2011 - which, in mama time - is about 20 years ago. Miss Paige was about 21 months old and in the throes of the Terrible Twos. Deacon was two weeks away from surgery. And I decided it was the perfect time to start potty training. {If you've been reading my blog for any length of time, you already know I'm a bit crazy. No need to establish that any further : ) }
I had been studying the art of potty training for a few months. Different opinions, methods, tips. I had my strategy and was ready to go full steam ahead. We were going cold turkey - no diapers. No pull-ups. Nothing. Unfortunately, Miss Paige didn't get the memo. For three looooong days Miss Paige fought me tooth and nail. NOTHING could get her to sit on the potty. Not M&Ms. Not cookies. Not stickers. Every time I turned my head, she would pee on the floor. I would sit down to feed Deacon, and Paige would pee on the floor. It was straight out defiance. She didn't want to pee on the potty, and nothing and nobody was going to make her.
After the third day of a household covered in pee (even Lenni the dog) and three of the four of us daytime warriors in tears (since Lenni doesn't cry), we threw in the towel. And threw out the potty. (It was later rescued from the trash can by Daniel before garbage pick-up, but stayed out of sight in the garage. It was too traumatic - for me, not for Paige - to look at it.) I decided that I would not even think about potty training again until February. By that point, Paige would be 26 months old, Deacon would be sitting up by himself and holding his bottle, and I would be recovered from the trauma that was potty training attempts the first time around.
February came and went and potty training continued to be a 'bad word' in our house. Same with March. And then April came and I began to come up with a strategy - but I was definitely in no rush. I bought a new potty (since the first one had too much negativity attached to it : ) ) and a potty book. I went through the book and - using stickers - replaced the character's name with "Paige". I also took out my trusty markers and colored the potty in the book green to match Paige's new green potty. I started reading Paige the book every night and she loved it - but we had no discussion of her actually sitting on the potty. No timeline. No deadline. I was too scared of making the wrong decision on timing and technique again.
Luckily, Miss Paige and her BFF Ansley-Pants took matters into their own hands and made the decision for me.
It was April 10 - my 29th birthday - and I was watching Ansley-Pants while my BFF Kelly (Ansley's mama) was at an appointment. Ansley-Pants is a few months older than Miss Paige, and had been officially potty trained for a few weeks. So of course when Ansley-Pants had to pee, she went right to the potty with no problem. Well, the second time this happened, Miss Paige decided that she wanted to do that too - if her BFF was doing something so exciting and getting Mama to jump up and down in excitement, when she wanted to do it too. And she did! Miss Paige sat right down on the potty and peed like it was no big deal. For the next hour or so, Ansley and Paige would take turns sitting on the potty. It was like a dream come true!
Talk about the best birthday present EVER! No strategy. No planning. A two-year-old taught another two-year-old something that her 29 year old mother could not teach her. Talk about a mama ego check!
And so for the past 14 days, Paige hasn't looked back. Just a handful of accidents, but 95% of the time Miss Paige "puts all her pee pee in the potty." She still wears pull ups for nap time and bedtime, and will until she starts to wake up dry (she's not there yet). And I couldn't be happier.
Hallelujah! My peanut is growing up : )