Adventures in Potty Training

I'm brewing a little post about breast feeding, so men be warned...It's coming. And you don't want to read it. I've had some friends asking about my breastfeeding experiences, so as I come to the end of breastfeeding forever, I plan on chronicling it all, hoping that it can help those who seek to nurse their own babes.

But for now, I really want to chronicle this guy:

Chancey boy. Further proof that potty training is not a "one size fits all" operation.

Tip #1 On potty training - wait until your child is ready and interested.

I applied that with Charlie, and yet it took him until he was 3.5 years old to get motivated. It also meant we spent a summer outside, with him completely unclothed. Oh yeah, our neighbors love us, I'm sure. I tried candy bribes, I mean, "rewards." But that wasn't enough. Finally Daddy came up with the idea of a Lego set for each day that he could go on the potty all day (I'm not sure if this rewarded Charlie as much as it did Chuck!). But it did the trick. Eventually it was "You have to successfully potty for a week for a lego set." Then we ended it with a big lego set for the fact that he no longer wore diapers. However, we are STILL using pull-ups at night, and I've yet to figure out how to make him stop...

So, like Charlie, Chance showed interest in the potty around 18 months, but he is 3 years old now, and still not trained. The candy bribe works well (he gets bigger candy for #2 than for #1), as long as I don't have a diaper on him. But if he has a diaper on, he's in no hurry to potty. I've tried giving him big boys, but he could care less.

They say that the second child will usually want to potty earlier than the first child. I'm not convinced in our case.

I'm just not sure how to motivate him out of going in his diaper. However, a glimmer of hope is that he actually told me he needed to go potty while he had his diaper while we were out running errands last week. We just didn't make it to the potty in time. :(

But the funny thing about this time around: Chance is more lingual than Charlie. More descriptive. More talkative. More graphic. (I have no idea where he gets it from, ha!)

So anytime he makes #2 on the potty, he gives me the full report. "Mommy, I make snake poopie! It was a baby snake! SSSSSSSSS."

or "Mommy my poopie look like corn! It corn poopie!"

or my favorite, "My poopie like woooong (long) snake, and I flush it, and it go round and round and round, like a tornado!" I'm pretty sure this affinity for describing one's deification is limited to the male species...right? I think I understand some of my guy friends from high school a lot better now.

And if this child doesn't become a writer someday, I will be sorely disappointed.