Taking a Potty Break

It’s been a while since I wrote about our Potty-capades, and I know you’ve been on the edge of your potty seats…

Baby A continues to do really well. Probably 95% of the time at home, she’s very matter-of-fact about her potty business. (Meaning, there are precious few shenanigans during her trips to the potty…thank you, great porcelain god!)

And while she would really like to leave her mark in every public potty in the tri-county area, I have thus far been able to gauge when she *really* needs to go away from home (usually at a restaurant). At the grocery store, I’ve been able to tell her, “We’ll be home in 10 minutes. I need you to wait.”

Our portable potty seat is serving us very well. We’ve never used it as a stand-alone potty, but I do use it as a “topper” on public potty seats. Baby A is pretty good at keeping her hands on the handles, and it keeps both of us from having too much contact with the unknown ((shudder)).

Although she’s not always happy about it, I’ve been enforcing the rule that she has to sit on the potty before we leave the house. Usually she has her sights set on wherever we’re going, and she’s ready to jump in the car and go! I hope this will become a little more routine as time passes.

The only challenge continues to be when Baby A is having too much fun at home and doesn’t think about taking a potty break until it’s too late.

We’ve never had any major accidents…nothing more than the seat of her underwear getting a little wet…but it’s still happening a couple of times a week. I’m still keeping some kind of internal potty clock tuned to her habits, and if it’s been more than an hour and a half or so, I’ll ask her if she needs to go. Sometimes she’ll say yes, other times she’ll say no…and then it’s often just a matter of minutes before we have to change undies.

Should I push her to sit on the potty? Or will she eventually learn that changing undies is no fun?

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Now Baby B is another story…

Since her sister started using the potty, Baby B would ask to sit on the potty, too, usually three or four times a day. I allowed her to do this for a couple of months, but she never had any output.

A couple of weeks ago, I told B that I had had enough of her playing on the potty. (She didn’t even seem like she ever tried to go.) I told her we were taking a break from her potty time. The first time I told her “no”, she fussed for a moment. But since then, she’s been just fine with wearing her diaper.

Baby B will even say, “Sissy wears big girl panties, like Mommy. I wear a diaper.” I will occasionally remind her that she can wear panties, too, when she starts to use the potty. She’ll say, “Yeah!” but she doesn’t seem very motivated one way or the other.

(I have to laugh a bit that for a few months, she’s been able to discern the difference in Pampers and Huggies. I can’t help but think, “If you can enumerate what brand diaper you’re wearing, and what size, you really should be able to make on the potty…”…HA!)

Over the past couple of weeks, Baby B has woken up in the mornings with a dry diaper on several occasions. I asked her if she wanted to sit on the potty…knowing she HAD to go. She was excited for the opportunity, but didn’t seem to try at all. When I pushed her a bit yesterday, she said, “I want a diaper!”

I didn’t push the issue much more…I hate the idea of making her sit on the potty until she goes…but at this point I’m thinking I will probably need a different approach with Baby B than I took with Baby A, who basically trained herself.

I’m perfectly fine with giving Baby B some more time. Like Christina said once upon a time, “If potty training is stressful, your kiddo isn’t ready yet.” I think there’s a lot of truth in that.

And selfishly, this mama is VERY okay with just balancing one kiddo on the public potty right now!