Potty Training Lily

This post could also be titled “The Time I Bought Too Many Paper Towels”, and you’ll know why soon! Sunday morning, I loaded the kids into the van and ventured off to the magical land of Target. While there, we bought the following supplies….

Yep, it was time to try potty training Lily! The Starbucks was a sanity necessity for me, obviously.

When I potty trained the boys (we started a month before they turned two, and you can read random posts related to all of that here), we went through lots of m&ms, lots of underwear, and lots of paper towels. With Lily we’ve gone through a fair amount of underwear, and lots of m&ms, but that could be due partially to mommy “rewarding” herself a lot too….

The paper towels? We haven’t even used close to a whole roll!

Sunday, 11am – Time to start!

As soon as we got home with our supplies, I told Lily she was a big girl now and would use the potty instead of diapers. Game on! Over the next 2.5 hours (leading up to her nap), she had 7 accidents. Out of those 7 though, only 3 resulted in my needing to use paper towel to mop up a puddle or dribbles. The rest was a “just barely” accident because she told me she needed to go just as she had started.

She woke up from her  two and a half hour long nap dry, which was great, and then proceeded to have a rocking afternoon! Only 1 more accident the whole rest of the day, and she even did #2 in the toilet. Woohoo! Nick was in awe when he came home that night and I told him about the day she’d had (he was a doubter about me doing this already with her).

Monday

Lily woke up in the morning wet, but I kind of expected it. Chase, while daytime trained in 4 days, just before turning 2, still wasn’t dry every night for another 8 months or so. The other two took much longer than that to stay dry at night.

By about mid-way through the day I realized I didn’t need to ask Lily if she needed to go, because she was getting really good at telling me! The only accident all day was when I didn’t get to her fast enough after her nap. Her door had been closed and I finally heard her crying “Potty! Potty!”, but I was too late – she’d already gone a bit.

Tuesday

I had a meeting at the church that morning, which meant she was going to have to be put in childcare  for 2 hours. I did the pull-up over underwear trick, because the rooms have a ‘2 weeks accident free’ policy, but this way Lily would still feel the wetness right away. I stuck an “I’m Potty Training!” sticker on her back, and prepped the staff in the room.

When Nick picked Lily up 2 hours later she was wet. Apparently the staff didn’t understand what she was asking. Darn! Mental note to be more clear when I drop her off for church service this weekend…

That accident at church ended up being her only one of the day!

Wednesday

We had a little more trouble yesterday. We went to a park, and Lily was having too much fun to bother thinking about going to the bathroom, and because she’s been so good about telling me, I didn’t think to ask. Mental note – when out and about, make a point to ask her frequently.

All in all, I’d say this is going quite well! I did not expect her to catch on this quickly, so it turns out I definitely bought too many paper towels 😉