Henry, a "Really Useful Engine"

*This may be more information than some of you want, so consider yourselves warned.*

Andrew is finally potty training! With Eden, we tried so many different things (stickers, candy, potty party with a doll that can produce #1, etc.), but nothing worked for more than a day at the most. We even bought a couple books about little girls learning to use the toilet. She finally decided she wanted to when she went to sunbeams and realized that most of her friends were using the toilet, she was getting close to 3 1/2. Once she decided using the toilet was something she wanted to, it was only a couple days and she hardly had any accidents- only one in the bed. After that experience, I realized it just wasn't worth the battle unless the kid actually could be convince they wanted to use the toilet, and I swore I would never try potty-training again until age 3. I guess I'd rather change a diaper than clean up lots of "accidents."

But, Andrew started acting interested around September (before he was 3), so we started by bribing him just to sit on the toilet for a certain amount of time. We usually read one of the two books we bought about little boys potty-training. Andrew always acted excited when we talked about using the toilet, but he just was always too busy (he hardly walks anywhere, he's always RUNNING) to notice when he needed too. We were just starting to make some progress when I got hit hard with morning sickness and the kids kept getting the stomach flu, needless to say, potty-training wasn't even on the list of things to do. Then the holidays came, we started up again after our trip to Minneapolis at the beginning of January (so he was already 3), and he actually did #1 in the toilet a few times (without me prompting him!), but still was not at all consistent. He only noticed at times when he wasn't 'busy.'

I was just getting ready to try an idea my mom saw on the show "Jon & Kate + 8". They potty-trained the boys by lining up a little potty for each boy and making them sit on it until they produced something. Since Andrew obviously knew how to use the toilet, he needed something to make it more important to him. But, finding a stretch of days when I could stay at home with Andrew to enforce this training was proving difficult. Then a friend gave me the idea to have a special toy that he gets to play with if he produces something on the toilet and keeps his pants clean, but when he makes his pants dirty/wet, the toy gets put away until the next time he goes on the toilet and keeps his pants clean. He picked out a "Henry" train from the store on Friday and on Saturday morning he got to play with it for the first time.

He still wears a pull-up, but so far hasn't had more than one wet/dirty one in a day. (I wasn't going to use pull-ups again, just make him use a diaper until he was ready for underpants, but a while ago, I sent Scott to buy diapers, and he came back with pull-ups instead, so we had them just sitting in the basement. They can be even more pricey than diapers, but these are the generic Safeway brand and they hold up just fine, and there are definitely advantages to pull-ups if the child is actually using the toilet.) He didn't get to wear pull-ups until the second day, since he did so well on Saturday. And I probably won't put him in underwear until he says completely clean/dry for a few days at a time.

He stays clean/dry pretty well (all day on Wednesday!), except if he has a friend over or goes to a friends house (both of which happened more than usual for him this week). He's definitely much more conscious of using the toilet than he used to be. I think he'll probably have more accidents than Eden did, but he wakes up dry more often than not. I ask him quite a bit "Do you need to go potty?" but, he hardly ever goes when I ask him. He usually tells me he needs to go, then we go to the bathroom together since he still wants quite a bit of help. He's even used toilets at other places (ie. church, store) but not as consistently. I think he's made great progress, and I'm confident I won't have to be changing two diapers when this next baby comes!