Oh, the potty!

It seems like it would get easier, you know. Like, after you've potty-trained your third or fourth toddler, you'd become a pro. It seems like it. *sigh*

Joshua was three and a half when he FINALLY trained himself. Notice I said trained himself. I was two weeks away from giving birth to Rachael (#3), and had decided it was too much stress trying to train him in my rather large condition.

Daniel was nearly three when I gave up after setting a timer to take him to the potty every 3 minutes, and he'd still have accidents in between. Obviously, he wasn't ready. Two weeks later, as I was changing his diaper one day, he said, "No diaper, mommy." I told him he'd have to use the potty if he wanted no diaper. He looked away as if he was thinking about it, and then looking back at me, he said, "OK." I was skeptical, but as it turns out, he'd made up his mind. He never had another accident, day or night.

Having learned from my previous experiences, I more or less left the potty training up to the kid with my third and fourth toddlers. Rachael trained herself at 2 with very little input from me. Zechariah trained himself at 19 months despite my best efforts to hold him off. I was just months away from having Isaiah, and I had no interest in a potty trained toddler who could neither pull his pants up and down alone nor climb onto the potty. Things turned out just as I'd hoped they would not, with my little feller hollering, "Mommy, I need to go potty!" Just as I'd latched little Isaiah on, or just as I was laying him down for his precious few moments of sleep.

Looking back, it wasn't so bad having a tiny tot going potty. And I earned some serious bragging rights with the other moms of tots! Perhaps it seems nostalgic now only because I'm trying to persuade Isaiah that he's ready to use the potty. We were doing so well for a little while, there. He went four whole days without a single accident. Then, on the fifth day, we had to be at church all day, and it turned out that he was afraid to use their little potties (they have the ones with the seats that are split in the front). He had an accident while still at church, and he hasn't stayed dry since. That was a week and a half ago.

Oh, the joys of potty training. Anyway, I still have half a box of diapers from Sam's Club to go through. I was hoping to be able to give them to the church nursery because it had looked like we weren't going to need them. Oh, well.

Gotta go change a diaper. Joy.