Potty Training Update

We've been "officially" potty training for about 2 months now. It really hasn't been as slow a process as that suggests, but perhaps slower than it might have been because our busy routine isn't all that conducive to a "cold turkey" approach. For the past 2 months, Trey has been wearing only underwear at school, but he wears a pull up in the car going to and from school, and even though we're supposed to keep him only in underwear at home, he also wears a pull up when we're out in public, or at a friend's house, or even sometimes at home when we simply don't have the energy to worry about accidents. And, despite the marketing ploy that is pull ups and the fact that they are somewhat more conducive to potty training than traditional diapers, the reality is that pull ups really are another form of diapers. So they don't help the training process too much while they're being worn.

But despite our somewhat lazy efforts at home, Trey has been doing great. He will occasionally have one accident during the day at school, but lots of times it's during nap time (we give him a "pass" for those), and other times it's when he's having so much fun outside that he simply doesn't stop to think about needing to go. He's not quite as good at home, where he often forgets the need to go #1, but from the very beginning he's been great about #2, almost always telling us when he needs to go. I can really only think of 2 times that he's forgotten to tell us about #2, and both times that come to mind were when we were out and about, and Trey was distracted, and he was (conveniently) wearing a pull up.

For the first several weeks, we used the "take him to the potty every hour" method, which worked fairly well. But Trey has really started telling us when he needs to go the past couple of weeks, which has been great. In fact, this long weekend, I don't think we had a single accident (if you exclude the several hours on Sunday when Trey was wearing a swim diaper in the lake and surely relieved himself at some point, though we would never know). Even his pull ups stayed dry when he was wearing them.

So, the short and long of this is to share that Trey is doing great, and I really think we are very close to being officially potty trained. I have told him that if he can go an entire week without an accident he'll get to wear Thomas the Train underwear. And boy does he love Thomas the Train (not that the Thomas toothpaste makes him any more excited to brush his teeth, but that's another issue). Hopefully I'm not jinxing him by writing this and we won't be faced with several accidents tomorrow...