Easiest potty training ever

I never believed it when parents would say their kids would potty train themselves. "One day they just decided to do it and they've never had an accident since!" Often that would be in the case of girls anyways so I always dismissed the possibility of it ever happening to me.

I can't say that training Eli was as simple as that, but it is darn close. It's a whole lot less stressful than potty training Tobey and I can't put my finger on why. Second child and personality. That's all I can chalk it up to.

Eli started being "aware" of pee pee several months ago while in the bath. If he had nothing on, like during bath time, he'd tell us and he'd actually go on the Baby Bjorn potty seat. Sure, back then he'd yell "PEE PEE!" like it was the end of the world but since he was kind of doing it voluntarily, then I never got upset. I was quite impressed actually.

Immediate encouragement at the time to go in the potty was rejected. But I didn't push it. With the move coming up at the time, the last thing I wanted to do was potty train, be on a cross country drive with two kids needing to make potty stops, and then possibly retrain after moving. So we decided not to train him.

Then wouldn't you know it, the week before leaving, he started telling us he wanted to go on the potty besides just bath time. Backwards to most parents, I was thinking, "Oh GREAT, not now!" But it seemed wrong also to just tell him to go in a diaper/pull up. So we obliged and he was half potty trained.

So while on the trip, yes, we had to make twice as many pit stops. I remember Disneyland being particularly ridden with asynchronous potty stops. And while driving in the midwest, once it took us an hour to drive 27 miles because we had to make 3-4 stops (Tobey poo, Eli pee, Eli poo, Tom poo). We had the potty chair, the potty insert and a step stool, all just in case. With a potty training kid, who knew which he would feel more comfortable with. He passed one milestone while on the trip: first poo in the toilet at Eric & Denise's house in San Diego.

Also on the trip, Eli made the transition from diaper to pull up. Before we left Sunnyvale, I tried him on a pull up and he didn't poo all day (usually he poos twice). So I thought he might have thought he wasn't allowed to. So for the first half of the trip, he was still in a traditional diaper, which is a pain to put back on after a potty break. But somewhere along the trip, I was fed up with the diapers and bought pull ups and this time they worked. Pull ups ever since. It was also nice to unload the overabundance of diapers that I had bought for our road trip at Tom's parents'.

After we arrived in Boston, I'm not sure what happened but Eli just stopped telling us about his need to go to the potty. We never really had to remind him on the trip, he was the one telling us. And we got so busy, maybe, just settling in, that we never followed up with him about using the potty.

Finally last week, I was kind of sick of changing his <3 year old poopy diapers. Innocuous newborn diapers, they are not. With our 2T underwear packed away with our stuff, I went to Marshall's to buy Eli his own 6 pack of new underwear. I was too chicken to use them until yesterday when I longed to just stay home all day after a busy weekend. The underwear worked great. Sure, he had a few accidents -- we went through 4 pairs on the first day. Thank goodness none of those accidents were "solid" in nature. Today he is perfect in pee and poo and it makes sense that he is. He got the mechanics of pee and poo before and on our road trip. Now it's just a matter of remembering to go while doing everyday life. And so far today, he has. The one nice thing about Eli that was different from Tobey is that Eli is so much more pleasant in temperament, at least in the area of potty training. When Tobey would have an accident, he would get really upset which only immediately got us on edge by the sheer frequency of the whine he would make. For Eli, he would just go in a soft voice, "pee pee". I am so much calmer to deal with that (it doesn't hurt that we are in rental property either) than a screamer. And when Eli does sense the need to go, he just goes and comes and tells me (bare bottom) afterward that he went. Tobey, on the other hand, will dance and yell "peepeepeepeePEEPEE!" even though he is also perfectly capable of going with no help from us. I think Tobey is more of perfectionist and needs the acknowledgment of his need (reminds me of someone I know...me). Eli is, well, not so. So dare I say we are on our way to a diaper free home...in the daytime anyway.