Starting Potty Training

Today we started potty training....dun, dun, dun! I think it went pretty well for the first day. Andy will be 21 months old at the end of May and he has started showing a few signs of being ready to potty train. We'll see. People keep telling me that there is a small window of time now, or I can wait until after he turns 2. I don't really understand why there is a window now... that I guess goes away?? But that is what I keep hearing.

Anyway, I've been doing a lot of reading lately about different methods of potty training. I have no idea what is ultimately going to work for us, or if Andy is indeed ready, or if he is in this mysterious window of time... but here is what I have done so far...

A few weeks ago I bought a potty chair from Target to put in his bathroom upstairs. The seat is covered in frogs and turtles, so at least that part is a big hit! I also got the potty chair from my husband's childhood out of the garage and set it up in the bathroom downstairs. We started talking about the potty, bought a potty book to read and started sitting on it a few times a day. One time he told me he had to poop so we went and sat on the chair and he did #1 instead, but I made a big deal about it, he got an M&M, etc.

Well, this morning we started our first round of more intense training. We stayed home this morning and spent a few hours downstairs (on the hard floors and AWAY from the carpet!) without any diaper on. I also moved his potty chair into the kitchen for the morning. He got to drink as much watered down apple juice as his little heart desired. This kid LOVES. TO. DRINK! He will suck down two large sippy cups full of milk in about 2 minutes... only stopping to ask for more in between!

When he would start to go to the bathroom I would take him immediately to the potty chair. If he went in the chair, I made a big deal and he got an M&M. We got to the point where he would stop what he was doing if he had to go to the bathroom and yell "POOP!" and then start peeing on the floor (so there might be some confusion as to which is which! ha ha) but immediately stop and go to the chair... once on his own, the other times with my help... and finish going IN the potty!

I'm considering that a success for today. I think that for the next two days I'll just have him sit on the potty several times during the day and then we'll do another session like this morning on Monday. My neighbor lent me a book tonight to read as well, so I'll go through that this weekend and see what else I should add that I think might work for Andy.

I definitely DON'T want to force this, especially since it's early, so I'm just going to see how he does. If he resists, then we will stop and revisit it later. He's a pretty smart kid, so I think he is going to get the concept pretty quickly, but I'm not sure he'll really care. He would stay in a dirty diaper all day if I didn't change him. It just doesn't bother him. So, that part of it makes me wonder if he even cares to be clean and dry!

We'll see! I'm glad we have started the process and I'll take his lead from here on what he is ready for.