Monday, May 20, 2013

The Potty

This is it. This is the week we're buckling down and not leaving the house until E masters the potty.

I was originally thinking I'd wait until June, but it's time. E knows exactly what her potty is for and has been able to get on and off by herself for awhile now. She's perfectly capable of using it, just entirely unmotivated. The determining factor is that her diaper rash came back in full fury. It first appeared several months ago after I switched to Eco Sprouts detergent. After treating her bum with grapefruit seed extract and raw coconut oil while simultaneously treating her cloth diapers, we got rid of the stubborn rash only to have it resurface last week. Everything is under control again, but I've had enough. I don't know if the rash is caused by the new detergent or if it has been hibernating in the diapers, but I'm hoping not to stick around long enough to find out. E is more than ready to move on and I just need to muster all the patience in my being, put on a nice plastic smile, load up on chocolate for both of us and get it done. 

For some extra motivation I ordered some adorable training pants that will hold small accidents, seeing that E is still young and we will need them when leaving the house for the next few weeks.

I'll be starting Tuesday afternoon and hope to be making significant progress by the weekend. My hope is to put her on her potty every thirty to sixty minutes for the first few days and give her chocolate and/or stickers for every successful act until she is motivated to do it herself. (When the rash first appeared a few months ago, I got out the potty just to see what she'd do, and she used it first try. She had days where she'd use it up to 70% of the time, and days where she didn't use it at all. So now we just need to make her want to use it because we know she can.) I'm planning on keeping her in diapers for naps and nighttime for as long as it takes for her to wake up dry and make it to the bathroom. I'm thinking she'll get the hang of naptime pretty quickly, but I'm not in any hurry for now.

So... now I have to stick to the plan since it's been made public ;) ...or we'll just try again in a few months if all the patience in my being just isn't enough, which is a distinct possibility.

Today I'll be running all my errands for the week and getting some fun activities for us to do at home. Container gardening, anyone? 

Off to load up on wine and chocolate to get me through... :)


Here's the before picture. Hopefully we're still smiling for the after!

2 comments:

  1. When my niece Mallory was potty training, I would try to bribe her with candy/toys...and she would tap my arm and go "Maybe later, Aunt Alex..." hahaha

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