hello undies!

it has been almost 8 months since hadley potty-trained and i can't believe i haven't blogged about it. what kind of mother am i to not brag about such a monumental event in my toddler's life? what kind of mother would i be if i didn't show you a picture or two of a cute toddler fanny in undies?

i am so the kind of mother who would show you those pictures. i am and i will.

cute, right?

hadley started showing interest in the potty a month or two before her 2nd birthday. i guess that is a bonus to having an older sister. but we didn't start doing anything about it then for two reasons: 1- i am lazy and 2- i am lazy. seriously, i can admit i'm flawed as a mother at times. so what i am telling you is that i was too lazy to potty-train my toddler who was showing obvious signs of interest? yup, sounds about right. i was lazy in the sense that i just didn't want to take time to do it, to have to clean up the many pee puddles that would be in the house. i was too lazy to run quickly to the potty with a toddler in my arms praying she doesn't leak(which ended up happening many times... little drips down the hallway). lazy in the sense of fear when we leave the house at all. maybe a little lazy too when it comes to public restrooms. well that isn't laziness. i just think they are gross and i hate when a toddler has to use them. you know they put their hands on everything and then in everything. who wants to welcome that.

then at hadley's 2 yr appt her pediatrician told me we should really potty-train her since she was obviously "ready." if you can' trust your ped, who can you trust?

one month later, we were both ready to accept our fate.. potty-training time.

we did the weekend at home with no diapers, no undies method. i think that is a method anyway. that is what we did with caroline. it was a long, boring weekend at home with lots of trips to the little potty. i tried making her sit on the potty every fifteen minutes. she obliged most of the time. overall, i'd say she did about 50% in the potty and 50% on the floor. not too bad for her first go around. i got nervous about school that week though, should i send her in undies to reinforce what we've been putting many hours in at or should i go back to diapers so her teachers don't have to mess w accidents? thankfully hadley has amazing preschool teachers. they let us go full on with the undies. sure she had an accident or two the first three days but after that she was smooth sailing on the toilet. aren't those little toilets at preschools so cute? i will also mention that we continued for a good few weeks with her potty chart. it was a great system which rewarded her with stickers and treats for going to the bathroom on the potty. this worked with caroline too. it is amazing how positive reinforcement works!

and she's done amazingly well ever since. seriously. i still can't believe how well she did potty training at 2 years and 2 months old. pretty impressive i think. and we really owe a lot of thanks to big sister caroline. she really makes everything so fun for hadley, even going to the bathroom. big sisters rock. especially if that big sister happens to be caroline.

once out of diapers, she wants nothing to do with them anymore. this even includes pull ups. i only request she wear a pull up at bedtime because if she is sleeping, she is likely to pee during that time but hadley is stubborn (i know i have mentioned that like a hundred times before). she wants what she wants and that is the end of it. my compromise that isn't working to my advantage is waiting until she falls asleep at night to put a pull up on her. unfortunately she wakes up during the night once the pull up is wet, so i have to take it off and put undies on her. thankfully she, 9 times out of 10, remains dry the rest of the night or wakes me up to take her to the potty.  see why this isn't working out for me? it involves me waking up once or twice a night. i so miss a good nights sleep. on the bright side, she has really done such a great job with day and night potty training. she really impresses me.

now that hadley is in undies, you'd think she'd want to flaunt her cute self around in them all the time. i would if i looked that cute in my undies. she's never done it though. she's funny like that and really always wants clothes on. i tell her she can sing, dance, jump, run, skip, play all in her undies if she wants to but she says no, she wants her clothes on. like i said, she knows what she wants.


and if you want to see the post on caroline potty training... click here