Potty Training Woes

Well, we've reached that ripe old age of 3 - when I start thinking that enough is enough with the diapers. Angela has a late birthday and has another deadline - besides her third birthday. She needs to be potty trained for preschool in September. So, while I love the convenience of diapers and hate cleaning up all the accidents and spending lots of time running back and forth from the potty - I finally decided it was time to dive in to the potty training adventure once again.

In this picture Angela is holding her new Cabbage Patch doll that pees - an important element of the "Potty Training in a Day" method. (She is also sporting her new My Little Pony underwear - soo cute, but I didn't want to post the full pic on the blog.) Angela loved the dolly and all the hoopla that went along with her successes. Everything went fairly smooth for the first little bit. She did have a HUGE and I mean HUGE accident the first 30 minutes of training. The program instructs you to give your little student lots and lots of fluids for obvious reasons. I cannot believe just how much Angela's bladder could hold when the puddle beneath her kept growing to gallon-sized proportions. Okay - it probably just looked that way, but I was amazed and thought that we'd never get her to pee again because she must be totally dried out inside. Nevertheless, we did have success after the pee tsunami and things went well the rest of the day. She even pooped on the potty the first day!! Wahoo - Sarah and Natalie were freaked out about this at first when they were training. I thought we had the whole thing in the bag. Easy Peasy.

It's dangerous to think that way. Don't ever think anything with kids will turn out so easy - you will be disappointed about 96.4% of the time. I should never allow the thought, "Wow, that was easy" to cross my mind. Because then the next day came. Things went well until the #2 came. It hit when we were outside - Angela was riding around the garage and driveway on her scooter. Natalie came running over and informed me that Angela ran over some dog poop. You'd think I would have clued in earlier, but I was seriously mad and disgusted at whatever dog left us a little present in our yard. It turned out to be an imaginary dog. I don't know why it took me so long to put two and two together. When I started finding little droppings around the garage I started thinking, "What in the world was a dog doing in our garage?" Then the lightbulb turned on. Duh. It was MY little pet, Angela. The funny thing is that Angela got a little confused and was talking about the dog poop the rest of the day. I had to clarify that it was not a dog, but herself and wasn't that yucky pooping on the ground like a dog? She agreed, "Yeah, it's 'lily' yucky" (Angela says Lily instead of Really)

So, we are on day 4 and haven't had a successful #2 in the potty since day #1. I am getting tired of finding surprises upon inspection of Angela's Winnie the Pooh's. (Ha, no pun intended) Angela HATES the practicing we have to do as her punishment as prescribed in the "Potty Training in a Day" (HA - try multiplying that by 4, 5, 20) After an accident, the potty student has to help clean up and then "practice" running to the potty from the spot and various other locations when they get that "feeling". Here's my favorite "practice" Angela did with daddy yesterday. It went' something like this, Daddy: "What do you do if you are trying on a sombrero from the dress ups and you get that funny feeling?" Angela: "Oh man.." and some dramatic sighs. Daddy: "Angela, what do you do?" Angela: "Run to the Potty". (She used to say this with such gusto, but after practicing around 100 times the enthusiasm is gone.) After an accident when we've practiced 3-4 times Angela usually tells me, "Leave me alone." or exclaims, "Oh Dahn-it" (darn it). It is good that she doesn't like practicing - I'm hoping that will be motivating enough to stop having accidents. Oh please let it motivate her...

Wish me luck!