Potty Training- Day 1

Potty training is something I have been avoiding for a few months now. At 15 Months old Zander started showing signs of being ready to potty train. Keep in mind that as you read this, that every child is different when it comes to being potty trained and each child shows their own signs of being ready to be trained.
The first thing we noticed was Zander would grab the front of his diaper while peeing, and then after he would either gasp and put his hands high in the air, or he would go ohhh, which at the time stood for uh oh.
The second thing we noticed was when he went #2 he would go somewhere alone ( ex. behind the curtain, in the kitchen beside the fridge) and do his duty. When he was done he would then become fussy.
The last thing we noticed was his strong interest in the potty. I've never been the kind of parent to lock Zander outside the bathroom door while going to the bathroom. If he wants to come in, then he is more than welcome to join me. I'm not saying I don't enjoy my privacy, but it pays off when your toddler knows what a toilet is used for and becomes very comfortable with sitting on it and the sound of the flush.

So, here we are at the age of 18 Months and 10 days starting the potty training process. But I didn't just wake up this morning and randomly decided that today was the day. No way! I took about an hour last night getting everything ready. The first thing I got out was of course his potties. Like I had mentioned above, Zander has been on the toilet before. So the seat that goes on it is nothing new to him. He is very comfortable with it and the guard in the front is AMAZING! The pottty on the floor is fairly new to him. He has seen it before but never used it. It's a 3-in-1 potty which is kinda cool, but judging the guard on it, I wont be liking it too much.

 After I got the potties all set up for the morning, I got a bin from Zanders toy room and filled it with small toys, but the toys that I know he is really into right now. In the bin I have 2 small cardboard books, a few pieces of mega blocks along with a mega blocks dog, a doodle pad, a tooth brush, a whopie cushion, and a cell phone. Small enough to fit into the bin, yet extremely entertaining. Now I know a lot of people say that distractions are bad while potty training, but I think that when you are dealing with an 18 Month old, distractions are something for them to focus on. After all, they usually are playing while going in their diapers 90% of the time. As for the bin we keep it either on the edge of the bathtub or beside the sink.

 Now that I have the bathroom set up, I had to think about what else would be useful. Books? Totally! Zander got these books for Christmas so we have been reading these to him a few times a week. His all time favorite is the Sesame Street book. Its simple, yet gets the point across. It doesn't have a lot of words in it, therefore I'm able to read it 2-3 times before he gets tired of sitting. I love this book just as much as he does. 

Next on the list was of course training pants and underwear. Now, maybe it's where I live but I was having the hardest time finding training pants locally. The only ones I was able to find were the George brand which I found at Wal- Mart. Being a cloth diapering family I knew we had some local cloth diaper shops that sold trainers, but they were just way out of my budget. I decided to go with the George brand trainers. I bought 2 packs. Then I moved onto underwear. This was harder than I thought. Underwear style or boxer brief style? I talked to Brad about it and we decided together to go with the boxer briefs. From Brads point of view he says that they are more comfortable and provide more of an air flow. Perfect. From my point of view, its a whole different feel to Zander, nothing like a diaper would feel like and maybe providing us less accidents. Our only problem was finding his size. Again, maybe its where I'm living but the smallest size we could find was a 3. Zander is a super skinny toddler and those would just fall off him. We decided to go to a childrens clothing store, Bonnie Togs, where they sell popular brands such as Carters and Osh Gosh. We landed ourselfs 2 packs of Osh Gosh size 2 boxer briefs. Perfect.

 Lastly, I needed something to clean up the mess with. I'm expecting a ton of accidents and I know I don't have enough towels to do the job. So I got creative and pulled out some old prefolds. Again, we are a cloth diapering family, so it's only natural we have some outgrown diapers in our house. I have 12, but was only able to find about 8. Still enough to do the job. These bad boys were made to hold pee, why not keep them at work by cleaning up accidents?! Once I found enough I just re purposed a container and plopped them in there for a convenient and temporary storage. Hmm, speaking of storage, where am I going to store all these soiled trainers, boxers, and prefolds? I think I know. I pulled out my homemade wet bag. I used to use it for weekend trips away from home with our cloth diapers, but today and the rest of this potty training journey, it will be used to hold all that lovely stuff.

 

Now the only thing left to show you is where we are storing the clean training pants and boxer briefs. We have them in his top drawer of his dresser. The most convenient and obvious of course. 

 Alright, so now that you know how I have everything set up, lets get on with our first day of potty training. 

Zander woke up about 9:28am. I rushed out of bed and hurried him to the potty. I let him pick which one he wanted to use, naturally he chose the big potty because that's what he is comfortable with. But, he didn't go. I wasn't quick enough and that's OK. I know there will be plenty of opportunities for him to go in the potty today. As long as we have one successful pee in the potty by the end of the day, I will feel like I have accomplished something today.

  Zander spent some time on the potty and then asked to get off. I didn't make a big deal about it. I took him off and we went to put his first pair of big boy boxers on. I know potty training is going to be stressful, and I know Zander will get that vibe off of me and become unsettled himself. I don't want him to be forced to be on the potty because naturally that will only lead him to screaming and stressing himself out over something so silly. After all, there is no law saying a child has to be potty trained at 18 months right.

Remember how I said we had a hard time finding size 2 boxer briefs? If you look at the picture above you can tell these are ready to fall off, and trust me, they did a few times. So what I ended up doing was folding down the elastic part and they held up much better.

At 11: 30am I put Zander down for his morning nap, 3:30pm comes around and I just had to wake him up! Then the afternoon fun begins because Brad is home from work!

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After getting Zander up from his nap I put him on the big potty as soon as possible. He didn't last long, maybe a minuet, but hes a very cuddly person when he wakes up and throwing him onto a hard cold potty was not on his to do list. 

After cuddles and saying hi to daddy,  we sat him down for lunch. I came up with a brilliant idea this morning that I have failed to mention. I put his 3-in-1 potty on one of our chairs and sat him on it as a booster. That way, if he had to pee, it was all good and a lot less messy. Of course, he didn't end up peeing, but the though and idea was there right?!

 Even though we had Zander distracted by eating his lunch, he quickly wanted down. This is nothing new. You see, Zander is the kind of child that eats on the go. I have no idea why, because both Brad and I sit and eat at the table. Basically to make a long story short here, we needed re enforcement. Brad. Between Brad and Itsy Bitsy Spider, Zander was able to finish most of his lunch. But still no pee.

At a little after 4pm, we had to do some running around. Grabbing some batteries from the dollar store, and grabbing a few ingredients for dinner from the grocery store. We pondered. A lot! I wanted to leave Zander at home with Brad. But Brad wasn't feeling confident enough to do it on his own just yet. So, after a lot of thinking we did it. We went out. Without diapers. Brad put him on the potty one last time before leaving, and I packed an extra pair of loose fitting sweat pants, a pair of boxers, and some socks. We had Zander already dressed in a pair of sweats. I wasn't able to take any pictures, but we got back home about 4:45pm and had no accidents! We were lucky. Very lucky. But now that I think back on it, I did forget one thing. A prefold. What if Zander did have an accident? Sure I had the extra clothes, but what would I have cleaned it up with?

After dinner Brad put Zander on the potty, and guess what?! He went pee! Not much but enough to make us happy and praise him like crazy!
Once the big congrats was over we went back to our night routine where Brad gave Zander a tubby and I set his pj's out. I didn't want him wearing pants until it was time for him to go to bed so I just set out his shirt and a pair of boxers.

Close to bed time, about 7:20pm after Zander had his entire sippy of milk, we tried again. We let him pick a toy from his bin and he chomped on his toothbrush and played with daddy.

By 7:30pm Zander was in bed and out for the night. Today was a breeze. He spoiled us and I'm totally not expecting tomorrow or any other day to be anywhere close to as easy as today was. In fact, it kind of worries me that he held his pee for that long in between his nap and bedtime. But all in all, we accomplished today's goal. He went pee in the potty once and he did awesome. Tomorrow is a new day, another new adventure and a whole new challange!

Check out our video of A Day In The Life Of Potty Training - Day 1