Potty Training Update

(39 Months)

It's been about three weeks since Wild One stopped wearing a diaper for his nap.  He decided that it was time to stop wearing diapers.  I told him that if he had a dry diaper for five naps in a row, we'll stop wearing diapers.  Well, then we went to visit his cousin Buddy (who's three days younger) and Buddy told Wild One that he doesn't wear diapers for naps when he's at school.  That did it.  When we got back home, Wild One sang "No more diapers for me."  So we tried it.  He peed.  We tried it again the next day.  It was dry!  Could this be a fluke?  We tried on day three, it was dry!  Day four?  Dry!  Woo hoo!!!  We are done with diapers for naps!  Your time is running out Pampers.  Day five?  It was wet.  Ohhh.  Well, I guess I celebrated too soon.  Days six through fifteen?  Dry!

Wild One doesn't like sleep, especially naps.  An average nap is about 50 minutes.  A good nap is when he makes it all the way to 60 minutes, I can count on two hands how many times in 39 months that has actually happened.  The reason I didn't want to stop using diapers for nap time was because I didn't want him to loose any precious nap sleep (ok, and I didn't want to lose my precious mommy time).  I was also afraid he'd overuse the "I have to pee" line to keep getting out of bed.  He does.  In fact, he's peed on the potty six times before falling asleep for nap on two occasions.  This kid can squeeze out just enough pee so that I'll say to myself, "humph, he really did have to pee."

When he does have to pee, he calls out, I come over and he walks (leisurely) from his room to go to the bathroom (we still use the Bjorn potty chairs).  He tries to start a conversation, but I'm trying the 123 Magic method, of not responding so that he doesn't feel like he can take all day.  Then I walk him back to his bed.  He usually falls asleep after the third or fourth time of peeing on the potty.  The major downside to him becoming more independent, is that where nap time used to be dedicated to getting the bills paid, mopping, doing dishes, folding laundry, making phone calls, looking up projects/recipes... now it's stop and go, stop and go (no pun intended).

It's amazing, that waiting for him to be ready made this process go very smoothly (again, no pun intended).