I'm a Big Boy Now!!!

Potty Training Day #11!
Memorial weekend we decided that there were going to be NO more diapers in this Holub home for Dylan! With pre-school starting this fall there was no better time than NOW to rid of them! With the long Memorial Day weekend here and no real plans to venture away from home the timing was right!

I had gotten a few tips from friends who are going thru this same thing with their kids. The only difference being that their kids are girls. Well I was still very glad to take the tips anyway and add a few of our own idea's into this weekend long strategy.

We woke on Saturday morning, took off Dylan's diaper and told him that they did not make diapers for him anymore. That he was too big for them so now we wear big boy pants! We made a huge deal of his new Spiderman, Diego and Thomas the Train undies and after being a little confused for a few minutes, soon Dylan became very excited! We have two potty chairs and we let Dylan choose which one he wanted to use. He chose the smallest one, which we feel is probably some what uncomfortable for him, but his choice!

How adorable is this, 'look at me mom'! SO proud of himself!

The first day it took him about 2 hours before he actually went. When he did we praised him up and down and his reward was M&M's! 2 for a small pee and 4 for a big pee and 8 for poop! Cheap incentives and he gets SO extremly excited to get his reward. When I saw him actually go for the first time it just brought a big smile to my face and lots of tears to my eyes. I was SO incredibly proud of Dylan, such a great feeling as a parent to see what showing your child some encouragement pays back for a reward....your child being so proud of themself! Because he did SO good the first day his next reward was swimming time in the pool! It was my biggest worry going into this, that we would be finding poop and pee all over the floor in the house. Thank the lord that has not been the case! He has only had 6 accidents in 11 days, and only one of those poop and that was on day #2! His pee accidents were on the way to the potty one time and the other times he was standing up so thankfully none on the carpet and we caught them all right away.

Monday he had been doing so wonderful, we decided to yet again venture into the pool. The circumstance was that he needed to have a 'big pee' first' because there was to be NO peeing in the pool...yuck! First though, that morning we visited the Cemetary and on the way home, just as we were pulling down the street he told us he had to go potty. This was like music to our ears! He really deserved some fun in the pool after that! Since then though, he has not been regular about telling us he has to go, so we place him on the potty every hour if he has not told us.

With the weekend going so well, I was a little concerned to send him to daycare for fear of a lapse. No worries with our sitter because she was totally on the same page as us and knew before hand what she would be dealing with on Tuesday morning. But I was worried how Dylan would handle going for her, sitting on her potty etc. She has M&M's there for Dylan also and supports us and our routine 100%, this is a huge blessing, especially when working on potty training! So this week Dylan has done wonderful there, only having one accident and that was in the morning one day after I had just dropped him off. The issue in the morning is that he loves to sleep until literally just a few minutes before we leave the house, leaving minimal time to get dressed, brush teeth and eat breakfast. So having to sit on the potty takes some time getting up a few minutes early, well...sometimes that is not on Dylan's agenda!

We let him eat breakfast in his undies to help remind him he needs to go sit on the potty!

We are doing pull-ups at night time. We clearly are not ready to use just the undies at night yet, but that will come! We are very proud of our little man. He gets extremly proud of himself when he goes on the potty. He even knows by looking in there how many M&M's he gets according to how much he went! We praise him up and down, give high fives, sing 'yay Dylan' songs and the most rewarding thing ever is that he thanks us...he thanks us for the incredible job he just did! He says' oh thank you thank you thank you mom and dad', he runs around and jumps for joy, it is just adorable! We are very proud of our little dude, there is absolutly no turning back now! Quitting cold turkey with diapers I think was the best decision for Dylan, this way he is not confused on why today he doesn't get diapers but tomorrow he does?! We don't want to send mixed messages and he even knows that they don't make daytime pull-up's, only night-time ones;) We hope and pray that things continue to go well! But Dylan clearly knows he is a BIG boy now with no diapers. Where does the time go?!~