Diaper free is the way to be!

Yesterday Brody and I celebrated a month of no diapers! Actually a month and four days, but who's counting? After I picked him up from daycare we went to Tropical Smoothie. I had told Ben I was thinking about taking him to Walmart to pick out a new toy but Ben was like "Why don't you take him to get ice cream?" But Brody LOVES "moovies" (smoothies) so I thought that might be a better idea.

Plus while I was grocery shopping yesterday I may have picked him up a new hat, airplane, and new "monster jam" but shh, don't tell dad.

I thought that since we have been successful with potty training I would share the info that I found to be helpful.

Let me start off by saying I am not an expert. I did some research online and talked to people that have been through potty training before and just jumped into it. This is what worked for us. 

First of all, make sure your kid is ready. If they don't show any signs of being ready (for example, telling you when they need to go, telling you when they need to be changed etc.) don't even attempt to try potty training. That will only lead to frustration and making your kid not want to use the "big boy/girl" potty. Brody started telling us whenever he needed his diaper changed, that's when I knew it was time. I was off of work for a couple of weeks for Christmas and I didn't want to take him to daycare so I decided it was the perfect time to lock ourselves in the house and get rid of diapers. 

We went and got "big boy underwear," some m&m's for rewards, and one of those cool kid potty's that play music whenever it gets wet and the night before I told him "Ok tomorrow we aren't going to wear any diapers! You are going to start using the big boy potty like mommy and daddy!" So whenever he woke up the next morning he put on his big boy underwear and I told him that if he needs to go potty to use his big boy potty, and whenever he does he will get some m&m's. I recommend getting a few packs of underwear and whichever character they are into, that way it is kind of fun that they get to wear big boy underwear with Buzz Lightyear, Thomas, or Nemo etc. 

 All of the websites I had read said to let the kid go naked and I even had a friend tell me that's what she did and it was successful but my kid wouldn't even wear pajamas to school for pajama day so I knew that running around without anything on wasn't going to be an option for him.

 Of course there were accidents. And for that I recommend also getting carpet cleaner. By that afternoon he was sort of getting the hang of things and the number of accidents were decreasing. When he is at home with us he doesn't take naps so I didn't have to worry about nap time, but at night he did wear a pull-up (and actually he still does just incase). 

On the second day, he still had a couple of accidents but nothing major. By the third day, he wasn't having any accidents aside from going #2. Up until about a couple of weeks ago he refused to go #2 in the potty. Finally, when he had his last accident he wanted to look at his underwear (it was Thomas the train) while I was cleaning it up and I told him that he couldn't see Thomas because Thomas was sad and Thomas was crying because he was dirty. He repeated "I make Thomas cry? Thomas is sad." And ever since has gone #2 in the potty. Well except for a few weeks ago when daddy took a little too long to get him to the potty, which in his defense, I was taking a shower and had the bathroom door locked. 

So that was our potty training experience. Again, I am no expert but this is what worked for us and maybe will help someone else that is about to go through it. And hopefully he won't kill me in 13 years whenever he reads this.