Potty Training

I hope I don't jinx her progress by saying this, but I think we may be getting somewhere with the potty training. I am using the candy as a reward method and Jorryn has been doing really well the past few days.

I have the absolute worst schedule imagineable for potty training. Luckily, work has been a tad bit slower lately and so I have spent some mornings, partial afternoons just letting her run around in training panties. She loves wearing them, actually she usually begs to wear them. I'm just not brave enough nor have the energy to commit to doing in full time just yet. I tried doing panties with plastic cover, but there was still significant leakage and I don't like the idea of having to carry around 5 pairs of clothing each day and having to take apart and wash the carseat every other day... *sigh*

I took my first serious stab at potty training a few weeks ago, when I spent a whole morning and afternoon around the house trying to really clean it up good. I don't often spend a whole day at home... I get overwhelmed by all the chores needing to be done, the clutter that needs to be sifted through, the remodeling that has been going on for over four years. The truth is I am content with my house, I am extremely grateful for my house, but I don't like my house. Only because of all the things that are wrong with it that I just can't find the money, the energy, the help to fix up. So anyways, bottom line is that I don't like to be home for very long.

I asked Jorryn if she'd like to wear her panties that day and of course she hopped up and down and said yes! One of the traits that I just love so much about my daughter is her overwhelming, unbridled enthusiasm. Nothing is just, yea! to her it's more like, "WWWWWWWWWWWWOOOOHOOOO YEAAAAAAAA!!! WEEEEEEEE!!!!! YEEEEEHAWWW!!!" with lots of hopping up and down, dancing, beaming and cheering! I hope she can hold on to that forever.

She managed to stay dry for six hours, having had only one accident, right at the beginning. She had such a good start that the next day as we left town to visit family for 4th of July weekend, we decided to keep in up all the way there. It took us 7.5 hours to get there (when it normally takes about 5) and we stopped every 30-40 minutes to let her pee. And everytime she peed, she got a treat, so she was pretty much bouncing off the sides of her carseat. Unfortunately, when we finally reached our destination, we got overwhelmed with family issues (father-in-law had just gotten out of the hospital and needed lots of home care) and didn't do much training the rest of the long weekend.

When we got back, I tried to get things going again, but once we got to work, she outright refused to go potty and refused the whole rest of the evening. Nothing, including candy, would entice her to go. So I just gave up. I didn't want to turn it into a negative issue, so I just let it go and figured we'd try again in a few weeks.

Well, it so happens that this week was kind of slow, (and somewhat hot and/or rainy), so we did the panties test again, and she has been doing really well for the past few days. She even kept things up at work, and I only gave her candy when she remembered to ask for it, so it ended up not being so bad at all. My co-worker's son has also been potty training lately, and they seemed to feed each other's desire to succeed. It was a really great evening in the potty training world!