We have entered the Potty Training Zone....Part 1

So I caved in and listened to peer pressure and have been attempting the whole potty training experiment with Noah this week. I figured Spring Break was as good a time as any since there would be no preschool or bible study daycare distractions during the week. Plus this week coincides with him officially turning 2.5 which is supposedly the magical age (according to my personal panel of "expert" moms I regularly consult!) to potty train a boy. If you do it much earlier (I hear) they regress. If you do it much later (I hear) they don't care about pleasing you and really don't listen to your instructions (imagine that).

To say I was not looking forward to this week would be a major understatement. When i declared "Spring Break" as our potty training week, I must admit, it seemed pretty far away. 3 months ago is when I came up with this plan and those 3 months sure did go by fast. I counted down the days til Spring Break with extreme dread. I even contemplated buying large quantities of lottery tickets hoping I would actually win and then could pay some willing child psychologist expert (or just another gullible mom) lots of money to potty train him for me. I thought about just keeping him in diapers til right before kindergarten and letting him potty train himself (ok, not really). I begged my mom to come potty train him for me and I even considered enrolling him in daycare for 2 months just so they would do it for me (David said "No" to that request).

My biggest fear was that he seemed soooooooo NOT ready for potty training. All of the moms in our playgroup have been diligently preparing their sweet little boys to use the potty for months with books, videos and they have been patiently sitting them on the potty each and every day to get them accustomed to it. I have not. He wouldn't go near it and seemed to have ZERO interest in ever doing such. While I didn't gather a lot of info from books on the subject, I did read one of those articles about "take this 10 question quiz to see if your toddler is ready to potty train" and the results were not encouraging. I think we had to answer "yes" to at least 7-8 of the questions to know our child was "ready" and we answered "yes" to only ONE of them which had me believing this kid was gonna still be in diapers at his middle school graduation. He seemed as ready to potty train as the mailbox sitting outside. NO INTEREST WHATSOEVER and basically NO clue about any bodily functions. The kid would sit in a soaking wet diaper or a very nasty diaper for hours if I would let him. He flat out doesn't care and certainly doesn't seem to notice.

But, since I had totally cleared the schedule for the week I really couldn't back out. I had stocked up on everything I could possibly need so I wouldn't have to leave the house all week and could dedicate the whole week to doing nothing but potty training. (how fun). I bought 9 pair of training pants and decided we would not use "pull-ups" for the risk of confusing him. It was going to be all or nothing around here. We stocked up on clorox wipes, carpet cleaner, rubber pants and we rolled up all the nice rugs. I stopped just short of actually moving all of our furniture out of the house into a storage unit (and don't think I didn't consider checking myself and Noah--and all our potty supplies--into a local motel for the week for this event).

We started out day 1 by presenting Noah with 2 gifts to unwrap. One was his new training pants ("big-boy underwear" we emphasized) and the other was his "Thomas the Train" potty seat. He eagerly tore into the gifts (expecting something much more exciting) and when he saw what they were and what we were asking him to do, he politely handed them all back to us and ran as far away from us as he could get. Yes, it got off to a very "encouraging" start! And that is when David left to go to work and said "GOOD LUCK" to me.......LOVELY!

......to be continued