At long last

Well, at long last, it looks as if we might be making a little progress in the potty training arena. Wait. Let me rephrase that. It looks like the nanny is making progress. The boy refuses to do it for us most of the time. Which then ends up in a big fight between us and the boy and sometimes his eventual peeing on the floor, as he did last night!

During our first attempts at potty training back in September, he turned into a little monster. He wanted to sit on the potty, even the big toilet. But we couldn't get him to get OFF the toilet. After an hour of sitting on the toilet, we finally had to wrestle him to the floor and forcibly put his pants back on him. Then he started throwing fits when it was time to get dressed in the morning and he started throwing fits all the time. He was a different little boy. We discontinued the attempts at potty training and he turned normal again. Everyone told us not to despair, that we could try again later and he would be more ready.

Well, given our first full-blown experience with potty training, we weren't in a huge hurry to attempt it again. Especially since he would pull the same kind of stuff almost every time he used the potty before bath time.

He would sit on the potty, go pee, then we would try to get him into the tub. He would head towards the tub and then say, "No, I need to go potty again." And then he would sit on the potty again. We tried explaining to him that we were happy that he wanted to use the potty, but after you go pee-pee once, there's probably not anymore going to come out and we could try again later. "NO!!!!! I WANT TO GO POTTY NOW!!!!!" And it would continue. Sometimes he would stand and scream through his entire bath. Yeah, we were definitely not interested in dealing with that for a month or more while we tried to convince him to use the potty.

Now, however, in the last couple of weeks, he's begun to wear Pull-ups and sometimes even big-boy pants. But only for the nanny. This past weekend, he absolutely would not sit on the potty for us.

I know this somehow is related to his need to be in control, or at least feel like he's in control. And we try to give him options. "Do you want to use your potty in the upstairs bathroom, or in the downstairs bathroom?" "Do you want to use your little potty, or the big potty?" Etc. But sometimes, if we smile just right and hold his hand just right, we can lead him into the bathroom and get him to sit on the potty while we use the toilet. Baby steps, huh? Ugh.

Well, I think we might attempt potty boot camp this coming weekend. We'll just stay at home and put underwear on him and clean everything up as necessary. We'll see how that goes. If we don't survive, please come looking for us...