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Sunday, January 17, 2010

Ringing In the New Year

Happy 2010! The Petersons began the new year unlike any other...potty training! Let me tell you, this was almost enough to make me not want to have more children (and then I remembered it was a little too late to be thinking that). Hannah was showing signs that she was probably ready to potty train so I decided to take advantage of my two weeks off from work over winter break and give it a go. One of my friends had told me about The Three Day Potty Training Method and how it worked really well for her son. I looked into it and the book recommends that you start potty training when your child is 22 months old. Hannah was just days shy of 22 months- perfect timing! We began on a Wednesday and according to this book, we were going to be done by Friday (ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha). I think I expected Hannah just to pick it up really quickly and that it wouldn't take the entire 3 days, because after all, she is pretty smart and does well with most transitions. Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday came and went and she still wasn't getting it! It is not that she was having accidents, it was that she was holding it for HOURS, afraid to go to the bathroom! I was almost in tears and did a lot of praying for patience. Saturday and Sunday didn't show much improvement and I was having second thoughts about all of this. On Sunday we decided to add a new reward system and put up a sticker chart. That helped a little bit, but not like I thought it would. Monday came and it was the worst day yet. What were we doing wrong? I thought she was too young and that I should just stop and try again later. Parents had written on the 3 Day Training Website that it just "clicked" for their children. There was NO clicking going on in our house! That night, I sent the book with Kyle to work and told him to read it. Maybe he could see something that I was doing wrong and we could fix it. He read it through and took some notes so that he could help Hannah while I was at work on Tuesday morning. When I got home I found out that Hannah had a great morning! That afternoon continued to be great and it finally clicked for her! She hasn't had an accident in the daytime since January 5th (we are still working on night time)! She is doing so well and I'm so glad we stuck it out. It took us 6 days instead of 3 but I keep telling myself that she is only 22 months old! Frustrating experience, but now that it is over, it wasn't that bad!


Hannah has the "potty routine" down. She will go in her little potty chair. Then she says, "Dump it, dump it" and she pours it into the toilet. Then she says, "Flush it, flush it." As it goes down she says, "Bye bye pee pee." Then she puts the lid down and grabs her sticker book to pick out her sticker! I'm SO big!

Can you tell which day it finally "clicked?" By Friday this chart was covered in stickers! She is now so good at going to the potty that we don't even have to use the stickers or the chart anymore.
Yea Hannah!












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