April was six months ago now and I put off finishing the post until it had a happy ending. Here it is:

We have successfully (basically) potty trained!

You can check out the beginning of our potty training journey here. I got cocky and totally thought my kid had potty trained himself and hahhhh–I was wrong. God humbled me and there was still four months to go. Thanks, Lord.

Did it take us six months of consistent potty training to get there? Definitely no. A few days after the first part of this post was written I decided we weren’t going to play the game anymore and I left the potty out and stopped trying. I couldn’t be consistent because of work and he needed consistency so we waited until I could give it to him, and I sure am glad I did because four months later, we pulled the potty out in our new apartment and within two days he was (basically) full potty trained.

I say basically since he still struggles when we go out because he has a hard time telling the difference between wearing a diaper and wearing underwear, but at home we were accident free, even overnight, within two days.

And the best part? Because we waited until he was ready, all I did was plop him down with a couple of books, a snack, and lots of water, and he started peeing on the potty immediately.

Here’s how we did it:

• Obviously, we had been talking about potty training for a few months ahead of time. He knew was a potty was, Daddy had shown him how to use it, and he knew how to tell us he needed to go.
• But he didn’t tell us, so we left him naked or he just wore a shirt. We tried underwear but he didn’t care about being wet and couldn’t figure out why he couldn’t just pee in it like a diaper. Underwear came later.
  
• We chose a time when I was no longer working so I had a few days to commit. I didn’t want to have to put him in a diaper for any reason at the beginning so he had to use the potty.
• We stopped diapers at home completely. No diapers during nap time, no diapers at night. We put his potty in his room and the first night he had an accident and it’s only happened once in the months since then. I was very clearly warned that if you still do diapers “sometimes” you could end up with a kid who holds it until the diaper becomes an option.
  (Note: we do pull ups sometimes now when we go out because we have things like hour long drives on a highway with no bathrooms and he’s not yet able to hold it, but we only reintroduced pull ups once we had nailed using the potty at home.)
• One day I told him we were done with diapers and I sat him down on the potty and told him he could have a piece of chocolate if he peed on the potty. I have amazing friends who never used rewards but with an infant daughter who needed a lot of attention, I was not above speeding up the process. I did chocolate the first few times and then stopped offering it. He never expected it.
• When he finally did pee in the potty, you better believe we partied. We happy danced, we ate chocolate, we high-fived, I smothered him in hugs and kisses. After about three times of using the potty, I slowly dialed back and by day 2, he was totally fine going with no fanfare.
• I set up a little station next to the potty with lots of water, his favorite drink Ningxia Red, books, and some fruit to snack on. The first few days he often sat there for 10-15 minutes until he figured out some bladder control and could go immediately.
• Once he would run to the potty by himself, I left the potty on the laminate flooring in the dining room and he spent his time at home half naked and would go by himself.
• When we started going out, if it was for less than half an hour I would put pants on him and we would practice what to do if he needed to pee pee. Then I would ask him frequently when we were out (if I remembered, which I often didn’t.) Sometimes accidents happened and we just brought a change of clothes. We’re still working on that but if I remembered to just take him more frequently I think we would solve our problem very quickly.
• He loves to wear his Daddy’s t-shirts and everyone wins with this one. Little man misses Daddy a little less and feels awesome wearing his shirts, he’s not getting his booty everywhere, I similarly do not have a booty in my face when he’s climbing all over me, our neighbors don’t get the view through our giant sliding doors, and he can very easily lift it up when he needs to go.
  
• Now, he climbs up on the toilet and goes there. We never taught him that, he simply learned from observing so…demonstrate. Little boys especially want to be like Daddy and little girls want to be like mama–they want to do what you do. The effectiveness trumps the weirdness.

And from all this I learned:

You can fight the battle when you’re ready if it’s a battle you want to fight, and due to me working and our newborn daughter, I decided I didn’t want to fight the battle yet.

Or you can fight the battle when they are ready, and then it’s really no fight at all.

You can try and if it’s obvious they’re not ready, you can hold off and try again in a few weeks. Every child is going to be ready at a different time and if you’re dedicated and persistent, I know you can very happily do it before they might be considered “ready” as well–the wonderful thing is that it’s totally up to you as a parent.

When you are ready, if you want them to learn quickly, commit. If you want to potty train halfheartedly that’s your prerogative but I promise you that your little human will learn halfheartedly too, and why would you want to draw this process out?

Finally, I leave you with this:

Don’t cry over spilled milk and similarly don’t cry about pee all your carpet. Get a small towel and a spray bottle of fresh smelling essential oils and rub it up. Lemon and Purification will completely get rid of the smell and Thieves cleaner will disinfect and smells awesome which is wonderful distraction from scrubbing up human waste.

Use wet wipes to initially scrub up poop so you don’t have to get that all over your towels and then again, use purifying essential oils and an all natural cleaner and you won’t even know it was there. Bonus points for using essential oils that will help you chill your beans, such as Lavender or Frankincense.

If you turn on dance music and laugh about it, the scrubbing feels a lot nicer than if you do it wallowing in misery.

Celebrate the victories and please, don’t punish your child for accidents. Remember they are tiny humans and as annoying and gross as it is, pooping on your brand new white carpet was not a personal offense, so if it’s that much of an issue lay blankets or towels anywhere you think this will be a problem. There is a time for punishment but potty training is not that time.

It will happen, mama.

It will happen with your grace and love and guidance and support.

This is only for a season and hopefully, it’s a very short one.

Also you should definitely include chocolate. Make it fun for everyone.