Potty training FAIL.

Ok, that was meant more as a joke, I know M2 is much too young to really be ready for potty training so technically she can't really be considered a failure at it. I could try to be like the Tiger mom and threaten to burn her stuffed animals if she doesn't use the potty correctly, but M2 doesn't quite understand 1) cause and effect, 2) what burning something means. She'll learn.

A few months back I bought M2 the Baby Bjorn potty along with a book titled "Stress Free Potty Training." Initially we had the potty out, but M2 wasn't interested in sitting on it and I was tired of finding the inner potty basin in random places (like on my pillow, by the back door with my shoes sticking out of it, or in the middle of the kitchen floor). I put the potty away in the closet.

Back in early December we had a horrifying event happen in our household - M2 shat in the bath tub. I guess that's just a parenting rite of passage, eh? It was quite disgusting and I will spare you the details, but I will say that it was the most disgusting thing I've ever had to clean up in my life. Earlier this week M2 was in her tub happily playing, but then she got up and climbed out of the tub. Mr.P was on bath time duty, and while he sat there reading the WSJ on his smartphone, M2 squatted down next to the bath tub and shat on the floor. Mr.P looked up and started yelling. I ran to the bathroom to see what the commotion was, and I have to say I started to laugh really hard. How can you not laugh when there is a naked little girl standing there next to a log of poo? I was so proud of her for knowing to get out of the tub this time. After cleaning up the poo, I got out her little potty and brought it into the bathroom. We showed her how to sit on it and explained that if she needs to use it she can let us know.

The next morning we were in the living room playing when M2 started tugging on her pants. She said "potty, potty." To which I ran to the other room, retrieved the potty and took off her pants and diaper. After sitting on the potty for a few minutes she got up and I saw that she had pooped! I was very impressed. Later that evening while I was out running errands I picked up a 3 pack of Gerber training underwear (the crotch is reinforced with a thick layer of batting to help with accidents). I would prefer to use these over the pull-ups training pants; I've read that pull-ups are said to extend potty training a good 6 months because kids find them confusing since they are basically just a diaper without tabs. The cotton training pants will absorb liquid but the child will still feel wet and uncomfortable.

Yesterday when I got M2 dressed I put her in a cute pair of flowered training underpants. I brought the potty out to the living room and told her let me know if she needed to use it. This is where the fail comes in: she did not let me know she needed to use the potty. 30 minutes after I had dressed her, I looked over at her and saw that her pants were wet, along with her socks and there was a small puddle on the hardwood floor (which led me to question the effectiveness of the training pants to actually absorb "accidents"). I got her changed and into a diaper. Last night at bathtime M2 was running around naked while I was bathing P5 first. Mr.P walked into our bedroom and found M2 peeing on the carpet! Whoops.

I know that potty training isn't easy. It can be a long process, and it really only works when the child is ready. We have the tools we will need to hopefully make it a successful transition, but for now I'm fine with keeping her in diapers and fostering her communication skills so that eventually we can get her potty trained.