the potty post...

several of you fabulous readers have asked me to share how i got lucy potty-trained at a fairly early age. well, i don't really have too many secrets--i think a lot of it had to do with the fact that lucy showed interest in using the potty early. i think another reason might be that she was determined to spend as much of the summer running around with little to no clothes on--and you know this mama has proof:

ah, yes. our little lucy no-pants. the brilliant thing about not wearing a diaper or pants is that whenever lucy started to pee, she was fully aware of what was going on. we made a big deal about it (even though she was peeing on our floor--this would not have been the case if we had carpet, but our entire house is hardwood & tile) congratulating her on her success. success of peeing on our floor, that is.

it didn't take too long before she able to pee on her diaper after i had just taken it off of her. i'd say something like "show mama how you can do a pee-pee," and more often than not, she would go. this showed me she had some sense of bladder control--which meant she was ready for a potty. we bought her a vintage chair from a local antique fair and found a bowl to fit it properly. started sitting her on it throughout the day. there would be successful tries and non-successful tries. i cleaned up literally 100 accidents over the course of the summer. and during that time, i made it a point to never get angry or frustrated with lucy (okay, i might have gotten frustrated here and there, but you get the main idea). it helped that i was pregnant and using the bathroom often--whenever i went, i just took lucy with me (every 30 minutes or so). we didn't have a mini-seat for the big toilet--i just hold her up there while she's going. if lucy said "no" to trying, then she didn't have too. even if it made for an accident later. in my experience as a nanny, battles over the potty are usually won by the toddler side--after all, they're ultimately in control.

what's the scoop on the poop? i honestly think we're lucky there. lucy's potty problems have always been with pee--she's fabulously reliable for doing #2 on the pot. thank goodness--cleaning toddler poo out of underwear is no fun at all, from the small bit that i have experienced.

we're fans of the gerber training pants. i was able to find a bunch of them at a consignment sale for really cheap. over the panties we use a wool cover. that's right mamas, save your outgrown wool. it will fit great when you're not layering it over a huge diaper, and it saves the child's pants from getting soaked if they do have a pee accident. we also had great success with using an unstuffed pocket diaper in place of underwear if we were going out. i liked the side snapping varieties (left loosely snapped) because i could pull them up & down like underwear. so we said goodbye to our prefolds and fitteds (sigh--potty training for a cloth diaper addict is certainly bittersweet).

that's really all i can think of as far as my potty-training expertise is concerned. now if you'll excuse me, i have to go fold hudson's diapers. thank goodness i had another baby to fuel my diaper addiction!