Adventures in Potty Training

I have been wanting to start potty training Tyler for a while now, I just needed the right window. I was looking for a few days where I had nothing on my calendar and could focus on just him. We have been prepping for a while. I bought him a little "potty" for his birthday. We have been talking about how he would get candy and money if he went to the bathroom on the toilet (I'm not beneath bribing). We bought some Cars and Thomas the Train underwear. I was ready to start several weeks ago, but then decided to wait until after our Spring Break trip to start... I really didn't want to have to deal with potty training while we were on vacation. Soooo, a couple weeks ago I bit the bullet and we started! The timing was actually really good because we started on the Thursday before General Conference, so we didn't even have to leave the house for church!

The first couple days, I started Tyler in underwear, but after a couple of accidents first thing in the morning, we went to bare bottomed. I just made him stay on the hardwood all day so when he did have an accident it would be easy to clean up. I was SO exhausted these first few days! On day one, Tyler made it to the toilet about 15 times, but had quite a few accidents. That meant a lot of cleaning for me. Days 2 and 3 were better - 17 times in the toilet (each day!) with only 3 accidents... but that's still a LOT of times going to the bathroom. Needless to say, he filled up his sticker chart quite quickly (which he liked way more than the candy/money bribing) and by Day 3 had earned a trip to McDonald's for an ice cream cone. I was SUPER proud of the fact that he wore underwear to McDonald's and stayed dry!

Since then, Tyler has typically had 2-3 accidents a day, with only one day of zero accidents. We even had one day where Tyler woke up dry after his nap (although training at naps/night will come later!) I have been trying to keep him in underwear at home and have been using pull-ups when we leave the house for my sanity. Tyler has started telling me more on his own when he needs to go to the bathroom, so that's nice, but it's not super consistent yet. I have loved the last few days where he comes running into my room in the morning saying, "Have to go bathroom!" Not a bad way to wake up when you're potty training your child. Here's to hoping this just gets easier and easier... I'm sure it will, but I look forward to when I can not stress about him being in underwear!