Reilly: PT Boot Camp

Last Tuesday (after weeks of anxiety just thinking about it and reading and preparing) I started potty training Reilly. He will be 3 in 6 weeks, and since we no longer have any kind of excuse about a "70-hours in the car" or "I think he's sick" or "It's Homecoming and we won't be home for days" or "Wait, I need a doll that drinks and wets...not today" or something like that, I finally jumped on in. And almost gave up.

A sweet friend took Jaina for the morning so I could just concentrate on Reilly, and I tried to do the method found in "Toilet Training in Less Than a Day." It definitely set up some good groundwork, but it didn't totally work for us. His favorite part of the whole process was the fast "practice! practice!" running back and forth from the potty to various parts of the house when he had an accident. I don't think it was supposed to be rewarding, but he found it exciting. Sigh. After 4 hours, and the 5th (and almost final) pair of wet underwear, and my son picking a diaper over "big boy pants" I was about ready to throw in the towel. (literally - I went through so many towels, though we stayed in the kitchen during all this)

I called a friend that had recently PTed her little boy, and she gave me a pep talk and a few other options. We tried again, and it went much better with the modifications. We basically just camped out in the kitchen all afternoon (half naked, in his case) and stayed there and in the basement the next day. I took the pressure off both of us (now that we'd had all the instructional time either of us could handle) and it started to go better. Here are some pictures of our "potty boot camp" that afternoon.

And here are two cute pictures of Jaina that day, just doing her thing, probably a little bewildered by the whole camping on the kitchen floor idea.


I began to see the light, and he actually caught on rather quickly, I think. He's been having 1-2 small-ish accidents a day this week (he's wearing training pants, so not a big deal). Friday (the 4th day) we ventured out of the house for 3 hours (and visited two public bathrooms - ew. I've always avoided those when possible up to now) and as of today (just under a week later) he's finally started telling me when he needs to go or just going on his own. So cool! He's really getting the hang of it. I don't think he even had any little accidents today...

Here he is on day 3, allowed to watch his afternoon movie (while Jaina napped) on my bed. Yes, I was feeling fairly brave. :)
He's well on his way to being "a big boy!" Now we just have to tackle the pacifier-for-sleeping issue. That one's going to be sadder, since he was excited about this. I don't thing there will be much excitement there...