Ain't No Party Like a Potty Party

It was time. Scarlet asked to sit on the potty at least once a day. Nothing ever came out... ever. Diapers didn't stay on for more than an hour or so before I would find her walking around bare butt for all. Which of course led to more than one mysterious wet puddle around the house and one extremely disgusting bowel movement in the middle of my bedroom. But the true reason I decided it was time to potty train Scarlet is because I had run out of my last big bag of Costco diapers. It was now or 108 diapers from now. The time had come.

After weighing my options, I settled in on the "potty train your child in one day" approach. Seriously, with a promise like that why would anyone go elsewhere? So I picked up the book. I think I was expecting a little more of a light read. Who knew it took a few hundred pages to teach you how to do something you've been doing since you were two?

To summarize, according to my new potty training guide, the trick to a successful day of potty training is to throw a potty party. You start the morning by giving your child a brand new doll. You spend the morning potty training the doll. There are stickers and treats to reward your new housebroken doll and the time in between bathroom breaks are spent watching every potty training movie and reading every potty training book you can find. Then, after nap time, the tides turn and you potty train your child.

The book is very specific. They expect you to follow their guidelines to the tee for optimal results. I am all about following directions, but I am not sure my potty party preparations were really what they had in mind.

My first task was to choose a party theme. They had everything from "super hero day" to "teddy bear picnic". Each theme had elaborate sets and props to build for the living room and bathroom. Fake trees, animals on the walls, paths leading around the house, it was pretty intense. I decided my theme would be... pink. I am kicking myself for not capturing the classiness that was my potty party decor but I will try my best to capture it in words for you. There were about four strings of crepe paper across the ceiling, five balloons bouncing around sporadically on the floor, and a big pink plastic tablecloth on the floor. Say what you will, Scarlet walked downstairs and said "mom, this is my party!" in the most excited voice. Gotta to love the easy to please.

The next project was the potty chart. The book had a pretty fancy chart with specific squares, times, etc. Mine looked like this...

If you can't read my amazing text it says, tried! pee! and poop! Yup, spent a lot of time on that.

The other area that I slacked just a little was the doll. Now little miss Dolly wears matching panties as the potty trainee. The book suggests you pull out the sewing machine and make the panties fit Dolly's bottom snugly. That is a thought, though you know what's faster? The sumo knot.

Yeah, like I was going to waste an entire set of panties on the doll. Though Scarlet did seem a little confused when her panties didn't have a big ball of knotted fabric in the back...

The morning started off well. Jon took care of Rhode so it was just Scarlet and me. We ate breakfast together then headed to the bathroom. Thanks to a medicine plunger, Dolly had her first pee in the potty. We celebrated, we cheered, Dolly got her rewards and then we settled in for one of the many potty training movies we would watch that day. And that is pretty much what we did all morning. At a few points, Dolly wet herself and even had a poo accident at one point. You would not believe how much a half chewed up tootsie roll looks like a big old lump of poo. Break a few up into small pieces and you have the perfect little terdlets to drop in the toilet behind Dolly.

One of the other goals of the morning is to get as much liquids in your child as you can. The more chances to pee, the more chances one will end up where you want it to. I had juices, sodas, flavored milks. By the end, I was having to beg Scarlet to just take one more sip of her soda (which she refers to as fuzzy, I don't really know why). After filling another glass, I walked in to find this.

"Dolly want my fuzzy, mom. She firsty."

You think you spend a lot of time with your child until you do something like this. When you spend every single second of a day with a two year old, time crawls at the most hideous of paces. I would be sure that it was at least an hour since I looked at a clock... nope 15 minutes. But we did it, we read the books several times, watched the shows, played games, did crafts and spent a whole lotta time in the bathroom.

I love it when little kids who aren't old enough to read can open a book they have read with their parents dozens of times and make their way through most of the words so it almost looks like they can read it. It is always so cute. Well, Scarlet did that for the first time! What is the first book she read aloud to her mom you ask? This one...

"El-fant has big poop, mouse small poop"

"Daddy poop, Scarlet poop, baby poop in diaper!"

"Eveyone eats... eveyone poops!"

Yes they do Scarlet. Glad that inspiring text has stuck so well in your mind.

After naps, Scarlet got to open a package of panties just for her and we tried them on. Then the morning went pretty much like the afternoon but with Scarlet's tush on the toilet instead. After guzzling our weight in liquid, Scarlet had to pee a total of 4 times. Three of them made it into the potty! It was hard to tell how much of the success was good timing but I was pretty dang proud of myself. And Scarlet, of course.

We finished our potty party day by throwing away her diapers (I had to give her some of Rhode's to throw away, she seriously was completely out) and then she got to open a big present as a reward.

I think she likes it.

The train was from Jon's mother, Grandma Charla. Scarlet and Rhode LOVE it. They watch that thing circle around the tracks over and over again.

The potty party is not meant for nighttime so she went to bed in a pull up. I really had no idea what to expect the next day. So in the morning, I tried to talk her into sitting on the potty every 20 minutes or so and she was not having it. She proceeded to pee twice on the kitchen floor in between my forced potty seatings. By that point I was cursing the potty party name and just left her alone for the rest of the day.

To my great and utter surprise a few hours later she said, "mom, need to potty." She got on the potty, peed, wiped, flushed, washed her hands, then asked for her treat. And she did that for the rest of the day... and the next. Now, five days later we are completely accident free including two trips to the store and nursery. Seriously. There are no words to describe the joy, not only of now changing half of the diapers I have been changing for the past eight months but also that I get to see these cute cheeks every day. It is the sweet life!