Potty Like a Rockstar!!

I am SO proud of our Braxton! He has officially said goodbye to his awake-time diapers. We replaced his favorite Elmo diapers (Pampers brand) with an Elmo potty and he has been doing great. It only took a few days for the idea of potty training to "click" for him and a little over two weeks for him to be mostly accident free. He still has the occasional accident, but I'm so proud of the progress he has made. What a smart little cookie!

I tackled the "potty training a toddler" challenge with my dear friend, Leslie whose little boy is one of Braxton's best buddies. Having a mommy buddy while going through a challenging phase of parenting was so helpful! We could cheer each other on, give each other advice, and not let each other quit. Both our boys are potty trained now and I think its safe to say we both maintained our sanity during the process. :-)

We had tried potty training last October and it was a big, fat failure. Braxton wasn't ready and I made a lot of mistakes as the potty-training parent. We tried the intense 3-day potty training method and it was awful. Justin and I both were a frustrated mess which in turn made Braxton a mess. This time, I took a laid back approach. When we began potty training, I expected him to miss the potty every single time for the first 4 days. Wow! What a difference this made in how our experience! When you expect the accidents every single time, you aren't frustrated or disappointed when your child has an accident every single time. Instead you can celebrate the times your child actually does make it to the potty! I wish I would've taken this approach the first time. Braxton and I were both less frazzled during the initial training phase and it was a success! Live and learn...poor first child...

Potty training was going great for about a week and a half and then he began to regress. The accidents started increasing as the initial excitement and curiosity dwindled. Of course this was frustrating, but my wise, wise mom gave me an excellent piece of advice. She told me to circle a date on the next month's calendar (I circled Valentine's Day) and reminded me that by that date, Braxton's regression would be long over and we would be coasting. It was true!! Here we are only a few days from Valentine's Day and Braxton is mostly accident free! Hurray!!

Our next step in potty training is to celebrate the number of days he goes without having an accident. We're going to be making a paper chain and add a link for every day he doesn't have an accident. When he has ten links on his paper chain he gets his much anticipated Tim Tebow poster for his room (to say the kid is obsessed with Tim Tebow is an understatement).

Braxton happy to say goodbye to his "Elmo" diapers. We used his no-longer-needed diaper money to buy diapers to donate to Life Network's Diaper Drive.