After reading John Rosemond's Toilet Training Without Tantrums: from parent or child
and Making the "Terrible" Twos Terrific
, I felt like that Charlotte and I were probably both ready to potty train before James' arrival. So I got her up from her nap one day and told her that we weren't wearing diapers anymore. She basically ran around the house nekked for two and a half days and we made a point to not ask her if she needed to go potty. If she had an accident, we reminded her what she was supposed to do but just kept going about our regular day and didn't make a big deal out of it. By day three we had added clothes and were making big progress. We kept adding clothes back on until we finally got back to being fully dressed with underwear instead of a diaper. By almost exactly a week later I felt like we were ready to get out of the house and so decided to go out with the sole purpose of waiting until she either had an accident or successfully went. I was a little worried about her not verbalizing that she needed to go since she didn't need a lot of help to go at home and so wanted to see what she'd do while we were out.
We loaded up and I continued pumping her with water. (You can also see how unsure I was since she's sitting on a towel in her car seat!) I took the "car potty" that we had gotten that also fits over a normal sized toilet and we set out. We went through Target on a very short list but nothing happened. So then we went to Hobby Lobby to wait. I'm not ashamed to say that while we never did any sort of prizes for successes at home, I definitely talked up that if she went successfully outside of the house that she could get a new present.
We just explored Hobby Lobby for about 45 minutes. Walked up and down the aisle. Answered lots of "What is that?" questions. Saw a lady with a cast on her foot that Charlotte was fascinated with and kept asking me what had happened to her. Got lots of sweet compliments on how cute she was from a lot of older ladies in the store. All the while I was trying my hardest to not ask her if she needed to go potty and she was just enjoying exploring. Until she saw Barkley....
When she saw this poster she really didn't want to leave this aisle again. She kept asking what his name was (one of her favorite questions for animals and people that we don't know). I asked her what she thought his name was and she thought for a little while and then said "Barkley." (Barkley was the name of one of my stuffed dogs or maybe my aunt's dog when I was little? But I'm not sure she's ever heard the name so it was funny that that's what she came up with.) She loved looking at Barkley and so I saw my chance and started talking up that she could get her very own stuffed Barkley to take home if she told me she needed to go potty. Maybe five or ten minutes later she started kind of dancing and so I asked if she wanted to try and she said yes and she went!
After her success we high-tailed it out of the store stopping at the front to let her pick out a stuffed animal. (I've always been annoyed that Hobby Lobby has Ty animals next to their registers because Charlotte always wants one but this time it came in handy!) She proudly took Barkley to the register and loved on him all the way home!
I'm sure that we'll have accidents in the future, in fact we're still having a few. There's also a very high probability that James' arrival will kick the potty training idea back a few notches and that's ok. As for now Charlotte's doing very well with the concept and we're glad that we tried once more before James' birth to get her to kick the diaper habit. In the effort of full disclosure though, please know that we're still using pull up's for nap time and night time. I'm not in a position to be changing sheets once or twice a day right now so that will have to wait a few months! :)
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