Potty Training

I decided to try and potty train Emily and Megan after the holidays.  If one, or both of them, picked it up, then that would be one less bum to change and a lot less diapers to buy.  If neither of them "got it," I was going to hold off and try again another time.

Here we are all ready to "par-tay!"  We have the salty treat (which will encourage lots of drinking of the fun sugary drinks), candy for a treat and baggies to hold the pennies they earn for going pee or poo in the party.  (Normally the candy would be enough, but the girls have watched Tyler get money for going poo in the potty for quite a while and they've been looking forward to that too.  So, if candy and pennies will help our cause along, I don't see why I shouldn't employ both forms of bribery.)



Here we have our 2 potties.



And here we have our entertainment (portable DVD on the little table).  I blocked off access to the carpeted areas of the house and only let the girls (and Tyler who wanted to be part of the "par-tay") stay in the kitchen and dining room areas so I wouldn't have to worry about pee on the carpets and couches.



So the premise of this potty training "method" (if you can even call it that) is that the kids have lots of opportunities to drink and pee and try to figure it all out.  They have lots and lots of accidents, but it's all on the laminate flooring so it's easy to clean up.  We trained the Wednesday, Thursday and Friday after New Years, but just in the morning.  I put their diapers back on at nap time and then our evenings were chaotic (and I was done with potty training for the day anyway).  We took the weekend off and then we tried again on the following Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.

We had to bring down the TV from our bedroom because the portable DVD player didn't work anymore.  This is a day when Tyler was a preschool and it was just Emily and Megan.

 

Emily got it!  Yay!  She picked up after a couple days what she needed to do and it was really quite easy.  Megan did NOT get it.  She wanted the candy and money, but she just couldn't figure it out.  (Tyler was the same way.  I tried for a while after he turned 3 years old and he just didn't get it.  Finally I just let it go and tried again 8 months later--1 month shy of his 4th birthday.  When he got it, he got it and it was sooooo easy).  So I'm just going to wait a little bit more with Megan.

Emily still occasionally has accidents, but she's doing so well.  She's not even afraid to go potty in public bathrooms.  Yay for that!  Emily is VERY independent and wants to do everything herself--get the stool for the big potty, flush the toilet, move the stool over to the sink, turn the water on, get soap on her hands and turn the water off.  If I intervene in any one of those steps she has to redo it all by herself.

Although we've run out of candy, Emily still gets a penny every time she goes pee and 2 pennies when she goes poo.  Yesterday she got to go spend her $1.00 at the dollar store.  Here are Emily and Tyler with their baggies of money.  (Tyler has been saving his from doing chores.)

 

Megan was sad that she didn't have any money.  She wanted to be in a picture too.  (And Daddy, who took them to the dollar store, was a softie and bought Megan a pony.  I, personally, was hoping the lack of money would be motivational for Megan to want to try and earn some on her own by giving potty training a try.  Oh well.  Sigh.....)