Potty Pouting

Did we start trying again? Yes. Does Lukey like it? see for yourself.

Back on Friday I finally had Luke hand over all of his diapers to Noah. I told myself we are not going to go back to them EVER AGAIN!!! No matter how much pain and torture we go through. (Since in the past I just kept giving up because he really didn't seem ready. And frankly, he really doesn't seem all that ready now either, but ready or not.....)

Luke's an interesting little character. I've learned a lot about him during all of this. Luke is the kind of person who doesn't like to do things that he is not perfectly good at. So this has come in handy the times that he does manage to make it to the potty in time. He's really proud of himself and feels really fulfilled. He's not big on trying new things, so changing from diapers to underwear has been less than comfortable for him. He's not a big fan of failing, but he does enough punishing himself that I don't feel like it's necessary to make him feel even worse when he's had accidents. He really doesn't know WHEN he needs to go. I think what it really comes down to is Luke is busy. He doesn't like someone telling him that he needs to do something like sit on a potty when clearly "there is no pee coming out!" He does throw quite the fit and requires WAY too much bribery to get him to even sit on the potty. As it is, he has to bring the potty (most of the time) into the tv room, get a juice (we usually don't even have these but I bought them for Kelly's bday party, and now they're all gone), and watch a show while he sits on his potty and accidentally pees in it (we have yet to see number 2 IN his potty :)). He refuses to sit on a big potty, so accidents in public places are almost a given. Which I'm really okay with, and I can understand, so far it's been bearable and I've been prepared.

Contrary to how this all sounds, he's done really well. He's actually amazingly good at holding it! He waited like 3 days before finally pooping once we started the potty training, which seems humanly impossible for Luke....he's very much a once, if not twice, a day pooper.

We've been rewarding him with a sticker on his cool chart, and a prize (when he remembers) from the wall-- we've had prizes hanging up in the bathroom for the last like 3 months. And the few times that he will sit on the potty when nothing comes out, he does get a treat for at least doing that. Even when he's mad all the way through it :). On Friday, he was doing so well and had put a sticker on the "Special Prize" spot on his chart, so he got to choose a special prize. I was really surprised when he picked a date with Mommy. Back in February the Doctor told me to use "alone time with mom or dad" as a reward when I potty train him, and honestly I almost laughed. He was totally not into the whole "alone time" thing yet. And that was 4 months ago, so he's had time to get more into it, but it still surprised me. Made me feel like I've been depriving him of said alone time simply because I didn't think he would like it. So anyway. I thought it was important to go on our date that night since the quicker he is rewarded the better. Nate made it possible for us to go and as requested by Luke we went to McDonald's for ice cream and fries. We had such a good time. He is so talkative on his own. It's funny how high maintenance my kids become when they're on their own too :) Makes me laugh. He had a lot of fun on the playground by himself because nobody else was there for the first half hour. Then he ended up having an accident (just milliseconds after I asked him to go sit on the potty) and we had to leave shortly after (confession: I did let Lukey shoot a few more hoops before leaving.... I figured he wasn't hurting anything. another confession: I had a change of pants but I wasn't in the mood to do the whole clean up at McDonald's mess..... we were starting to get crowded out by the dinner crowd anyway). It was a fun little date and I have now learned not to underestimate how my kids feel about something until I've really (REALLY) tried it out. And to not discount the fact that they change their minds so quickly. Luke told me on the way home that "I don't want to wear underwear. I just want to have a diaper so that I don't have to pee in my pants." Poor kid. If only that was socially acceptable....

That was long, sorry. My overall feelings: as much as I HATE potty training, Luke is doing much better than I would have thought. Hopefully we can stay positive about it all and I'm really hoping we can skip all the poop stuff that I had to deal with with Bradley.... I'm still having nightmares about that! If I've said it once I've said it a million times.... I would have 20 more kids if I didn't have to potty train them..... it's really not my favorite.

Having only one kid in diapers for the last few days has definitely been nice though :) I'll probably keep you TOO updated on the potty train and all of our happenings, but helps me stay up.