Potty training - part 2, day 4

Most of the exciting stuff of potty training today is somewhere embedded in the other posts. But in summary: Tobey pooped twice today in the potty! He had a couple of pee accidents which got me nervous about how training was going. But the fact that we can work through the accidents gives me hope that we should keep plugging away and not give up.

One thing I started to notice about today was that Tobey seems to grab or touch himself when he's about to pee. If I happen to see it, I'll encourage him to go, which sometimes (but not always) results in a pee in the potty. I'm also kind of starting to see through the false alarms, as he seems to wait until the very last second before declaring that he needs to go to the potty, and thus the hard-to-fake urgency. If he's walking non-chalantly to the potty, chances are it's a false alarm.

Another good moment from today was that Tobey once went on the potty when he wasn't super urgent. He willingly went to sit on the potty after I noticed him grabbing himself. He sat there for a while and I gave him some privacy (note: the privacy thing worked for the pooping as well!). I started cooking dinner and would check in on him once in a while. He was happy sitting there (actually, I think he was "exploring" but well, at least he was sitting on the potty) and after a long time, he actually peed. I've been trying to encourage him that during his false alarms (I don't call them that to him) sometimes if he sits longer and concentrates, he can still push out a pee or poop even if he didn't think he had one. So today he kind of did it. Once.

So I suppose things are progressing but I have been wondering how much longer I'll be housebound and what kind of outings I can go on with him. Tomorrow we go to the pool and since he has to wear a swim diaper anyway, I'm not as nervous about his accidents (come on, it's a toddler pool; think about all the "accidents" from the non-potty trained kids). We can still do playdates at people's houses but it's the errands that I'm not sure how long it will take for me to do again. One day at a time, one day at a time.