Potty training (continued)

Seriously, I have to say that potty training my 1 year old is the smartest thing I have ever done. I just gave my diaper champ to good will and we are done with all of that yucky diaper stuff. Now, she is still wearing a diaper at night time, but the last 3 or 4 nights in a row she has been dry when she gets up so if that continues during our vacation to Grandma's house this week, then I will try to just go with panties at night too and see what happens.

So here are more potty training tips in case you were dying for more:
1. Bring a potty with you in the car when you first start adventuring out of the house in panties. That way you can make a pit stop in any parking lot and let her go potty. BUT ALWAYS BRING A LARGE WATER BOTTLE SO YOU CAN RINSE IT OUT WHEN YOU ARE DONE.

2. Buy a book. Did I include this in the last post? I can't recall. We tried several potty books, but the best one for us was "A Potty for Me". Its gender neutral and it came closest to matching our particular style of potty training. We used to keep it in the bathroom and read it whenever the girls sat on the potty. It has fun pages to flip and you can watch the baby practice going potty and have an accident in her pants until she finally gets it and says "I'm so proud of me". Anika was very fond of that phrase. On a side note, it is helping with her use of pronouns. I also found it to be a useful reminder that the baby's Mom says "that's ok" whenever she has an accident. Because it is, in fact, ok. Not a cataclismic disaster, as I am feeling it is when it happens.

3. Repeat after me, "My poop is awesome". When Ani started pooping on the potty, she was really scared. And I made it worse by saying "don't touch that" "poop is yucky" "dirty" etc. So I changed my vocabulary to "just look. We don't want to get our hands wet in the pee pee" and "great job pooping, your poop is awesome. Can you say my poop is awesome?" A few days of this completely solved her fear factor. Clearly her poop in the potty is awesome so why was I constantly using negative words to describe it? Here she had created this great thing and put it exactly where I wanted it to be, and I was "poo pooing it". hee hee. get it?

4. Buy a portable toilet seat insert. I bought mine from Bed Bath and Beyond online. It is a toilet cover to make the opening smaller so she won't fall in. It folds up and fits in the diaper bag. Our has handles on the front. This makes going potty in any toilet easy for her because the seat always feels the same. Plus it has the added bonus of keeping her hands and bottom off the dirty public restroom toilet. It was less than ten dollars and worth every penny.

Well, that's the list for now. Happy pottying.