Potty Training

Oh my word this has been a long hard road!  Owen has been my hardest kid yet to potty train.  He is just so stubborn!  I would have loved to give him some more time, but he's a giant, and has outgrown the largest size of pullups and diapers. 

We started last November, when he got this awesome potty.  He'd sit on it occasionally, but he wouldn't actually go in it.

It was seriously just a battle of the wills, and he was winning.  My frustration level continued to rise, until one day I had just had it.  I was tired and I just couldn't do it anymore.  I warned him that if he pooped in his pullup, that I wouldn't change him.  And so guess what he did?  He pooped.  And I told him I wouldn't change him.  And I didn't.  It's not my proudest moment as a parent, but I just needed to feel like it was possible to have control over the situation.  So he sat in the living room in a poopy pullup, and every time I walked in the room, he would start to cry.  I would say to him, "Where do we go poop?".  He would just cry harder.  I just needed him to say, "the toilet", but he wouldn't.  And I wouldn't cave and change him till he could say it.

Finally Scott came home from work and changed him.  Owen cried.  I cried.  It was a really bad day.

But then, something clicked.  He decided he didn't need to pee in his pullup, and instead began peeing on the grass outside (as long as I'm not changing diapers, I don't care where he pees).  And a few days later while I was in McCall, Scott called to tell me that Owen had pooped in the toilet!!!!

And now I have a nice dead patch of grass out my bedroom door because that is the only place he will pee.  And I've had to throw away several pairs of underwear because he tends to still forget that we go poop in the toilet, but he's getting better. 

Every time he has a poop accident (he's got the peeing down perfectly), he cries and says, "I won't do it never again" and looks up at me with those sweet little eyes and say, "You still love me?".  And then he gets a bath and everything is good again.

And I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.  He isn't perfect yet (today when he went out to pee on the grass, he pooped out there too - "It was an accident, Mom.  You still love me?"), but he's getting it.  And the fact that he's getting it is enough for me.