In the meantime let me tell you about the last 2 weeks of our life.
As many know I have been trying to get Ethan interested in Potty training off and on the past little bit with no bites. Well 2 weeks ago Bill and I decided that enough was enough. We waited through that weekend since we had a road trip planned and didn't want to start things off bad. Monday let the potty training begin.
Day 1: Monday comes around and as soon as Ethan is up I'm fighting him to sit on the potty and go. He ended up getting just about everything taken away that first day and he still fought me on going into the bathroom. I had to keep telling myself to just stick with it and see what happens. I'm sure everyone knows how hard that was.
Day 2: Tuesday. Another morning of fighting, but this time he was willingly going into the bathroom, just fighting me with sitting on the toilet. Lunch time rolls around and I tell him he has to go in and go so we can eat lunch. So he goes in the bathroom and starts playing with everything. When I get in there he has put all the t.p. he rolled off in the garbage and tried to put everything else where it went so he didn't get in trouble. Cute, but not when your potty training. I sit him on the toilet, he's fighting me the whole time. After a couple min of putting him back on I finally get frustrated, pull him off the toilet, stand him in the tub and said Fine, pee then. He looked down then looked back up to me, said "Okay" and peed in the tub. And there was my epiphany! We cleaned everything up, had lunch and played with toys until nap time. Before nap I had him go again but this time I showed him to put cherrios in the toilet, stand on the stool and try to shoot the cherrios. He loved putting the cherrios in there, didn't quite get the point of them, but he went none-the-less. The rest of the day when the timer went off he was ecstatic about going to the bathroom.
Day 3: Wednesday. Morning was great. Went to the bathroom when he got out of bed no problem. Then I'm not sure what happened but he starting fighting me on everything, and I mean everything. The simplest things like breakfast turned into a fiasco. By lunch time he had cleaned up one accident and had told me he didn't want to eat lunch. The next time the timer went off I said lets go in and go potty. He looked at me, said "No", turned around and proceeded to pee all over the floor. Then as we were cleaning it up off the floor he stands up and does it again. At this point my emotional level had been spilling over due to the pregnancy hormones anyway, so this was like a damn breaking. Apparently Ethan doesn't like it when mom has a breakdown and had a breakdown of his own. So after we both calmed down, we sat and talked about what happen. I know he is only 3 but something clicked with him seeing mom sad and he didn't like it. So the rest of the day when the timer went off he would run in and go. Each time I told him how much that made me happy and how much I loved him.
Day 4: Thursday. Ethan wakes up exceptionally early for him and goes in without a problem. This continues the rest of the day and he was able to earn his toys and movies back. He was loving life. At this point Bill and I realized he had not pooped in 2 days so I was watching him carefully getting ready to run him in there, or try to support him so he wasn't afraid. Well I didn't have to do either, however it isn't what your thinking. He had been running into the bathroom every 10 - 15 min so I figured he probably had to go. I'm in the kitchen cleaning up from lunch and I hear little feet run into the bathroom, I can hear him peeing and then he says Mama come here. I walk into the bathroom and there he is, standing on the stool naked from the waist down showing me how he peed in the potty. However my eyes didn't go toward the toilet, instead they went to the stool. Apparently he didn't quite understand that when you pee standing up you have to turn around to poop in the toilet, so instead he pooped standing on the stool.
I was so happy that he had made it to the bathroom and had peed in the toilet that all I could do was laugh. Ethan cleaned it all up and didn't think anything of it because of the log that it was. However when we flushed the toilet, up came another problem... It had clogged the toilet. After finding the plunger and spending 15 min in there everything started working like normal. When I called Bill I was laughing so hard.
Day 5: Friday. Had a great morning and it seemed as though something had clicked for him because he was loving the underwear and was telling me when he had to go instead of using the timer. We had the same incident as yesterday with the pooping right before lunch so I tried to explain it again while trying not to laugh to hard. We got everything ready for our trip to Utah, stopped 3 times on the way down and didn't have one accident. It was GREAT!
Saturday was the same, no accidents, laughing at him pooping while he was standing. Even being away from home and not on our normal schedule he did great.
Sunday we went to our nephew Bryce's "not a homecoming" and left for home in the evening. Still no accidents, but also no poop yet, so when we stopped at Arbys for a bathroom break I asked if he had to go and he said yes so I had him turn around and everything went great! He was so proud to come out and tell Papa that he pooped in the potty.
so far this week we have had only 2 accidents. He had figured out to turn around and sit to poop and yells "everyone, everyone come here" when he does.
Overall as hard as it was going through the process it is just as Grandma Fritsch said, "Just remember this will all be just a blink." And it has, I can't believe it was only last week. We now have a cherrio dunker!
Wow, way to go Ethan. I have never like the potty training time.
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