Mismatched clothes

Emily has been wearing mismatched clothes all week . . .but all for a great reason! I decided to take the plunge again into potty training and this time I decided I was going to stick to my guns and have no turning back. No matter how many accidents . . . Emily wears training pants at home . . . no diapers (except during sleep time). So I have a laundry basket at the foot of the stairs with lots of knit pants and training pants. When she has an accident she just goes to the laundry basket to get a new pair of everything. I've been doing lots more laundry this week but I don't care.

And we are F-I-N-A-L-L-Y making progress!!!!! I know I've made every mistake in the book and have lost my cool when I wasn't supposed to and wasn't consistent before . . . and we have a VERY stubborn child : ) So hopefully after all of the learning on both our parts, we are now on the road to having 1 child diaper free. Emily has accidents and still only wants to go on her little potty . . . but hey . . . the girl is going. She wants me to set the timer for her and still puts up a little fight from time to time . . . but she has had numerous successes this week. Hallelujah!!!!

I've cleaned up some messes this week I thought I would never be able to handle . . . but I've gone to my "happy place" and cleaned them up. Last night for the very first time ever Emily pooped in the tub . . . gross!!!! Thank heavens Joe was at home and tackled that mess for me . . . I just couldn't do it.

Here is my sweetie pie in her mismatched clothes for the day. Way to go Emily!!!! We are so proud!!!!

This is the best smile I could get out of her this morning . . . .she is already hyped up on M and M treats this morning from her 3 successes before 11:00 a.m.!
So what have I learned thru all of this? To let go of trying to control so much of the situation myself. To not hang over her all the time to make sure she doesn't have accidents. If she does, she does. I've also learned to make sure she is setup to try to go and then walk away to give her some privacy. The whole hanging out and reading books strategy just distracted her from what needed to be done. This works great for some children but not Emily. I also learned not to make her sit there forever hoping she would go. I have her try to go and if after a minute or so she hasn't gone, then get up and reset the timer. I also learned from someone yesterday NOT to give her a ton to drink. I had heard to let them drink alot but that just seemed to cause more accidents for Emily because she was going every 15 minutes and believe me . . . trying to get her to go every 15 minutes was not helping the situation. So now I limit her intake of liquids and we try about every 45 minutes . . . I get a much better response from her then because I'm not interrupting her play time as much. We are also finally switching to P@ll Ups for school next week. I said I would never use these but we need to move away from diapers all together. It will be easier for her teachers at school if she has one of those on instead. I also learned to give her choices in the situation. If she doesn't want to try to go on the big potty then don't make a big deal out of it. I will just have to get over the grossness of cleaning out the little potty because she has chosen to use that one. I also let her choose what treat she wants when we have success. This has helped too in the motivation. I'm also now firm about it. When it's time to try I don't ASK her if she wants to go . . . I tell her it's time to try. If she doesn't move towards the bathroom then I give her a choice of trying to go to the bathroom or choosing to give up a toy that she is playing with. She gets to choose and I'm not pleading or arguing with her about trying. Because the girl is smart . . . she'll drag it out forever if I let her. In fact the other day she chose to give up her toy so I took her toy and moved on.

I hope all this info helps someone who is just as clueless as I am about how to do this! And I hope to read this again in a couple of years when we try all this on Abigail : )

I know this is just a journey and it will be a while before she is in underwear all the time with no accidents . . . but at least we are finally on THAT journey!

P.S. Update. February 5, 2010 will forever be the day that it "clicked" with Emily!!! She had 1 small accident this morning but I'm happy to report that the rest of the day was accident free!!!!!!!!!!!! She even stayed dry during her nap and went to the bathroom right when she got up. YEA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!