Potty Time!

It's that time again. Time to train a child to use the potty. I haven't done this in...nearly 3 1/2 years! I have No Clue what I'm doing, to be honest. Does anybody else feel that way when they take on the endeavor to potty train a child? It's a wonder that kids make it to Kindergarten in underwear, because I am not very talented at this whole training business.

Gannon is 2 years and 9 months old, and I have an entire summer to get him to use the potty. When he begins at his "new school" in August, I have been informed that he must be able to use the potty independently. Now, if those aren't words to freak out any parent whose child is not even remotely interested in using the potty, I don't know what is.

I'm a girl. I know how girls use the potty. I know about the anatomy of boys, and I've witnessed boys using the potty, so I know all the technicalities, but as far as TEACHING a boy how to do all that stuff that boys do, I'm dumbfounded. That is why I've asked Jamie to take over with the potty training. It's turned out that we're both on the potty wagon, so hopefully that will help.

This week I've started letting Gannon wear his "big boy underwear." He feels special because he gets to be like Daddy, except he gets to have Spider man on his underwear. I'm not a big fan of Pull-ups, so I tend to skip the middleman and go straight for the real deal. Hey, it worked with Melody, so it should theoretically work with Gannon, right??? Well, he had 2 accidents the first day and no success in the potty. Yesterday he went potty at school, even though he screamed his head off at his poor teacher the whole time. Apparently she placed him facing backwards on the potty (something we've done at home just a few times..not recently, however) and HE wanted to face forward. So he screamed, but he went in the potty. I gave him M&M's when he got home. Later that day, we put him in his underwear and while I was at work he had a small accident and then got the rest in the potty!!! It's actually really cute, because while Gannon sits on his little potty, Melody reads books to him. We have a stack of books next to the potty, and now that Melody can read it works out great! She gets M&M's too, for helping! It's really a great deal. We'll see how long this lasts, and if it works. I'm choosing to remain optimistic!