Our Life, 15 Minutes at a Time

Starting on Sunday, these things became a major part of our day.

Also, these were introduced. Yep, potty training, here we are.

The royal throne, complete with books and a little rug to keep cold toes warm.

And a fun variety of cute big boy pants and Buzz Lightyear Pull Ups.

We started Sunday after church, so it was only a half day attempt. It was relatively successful. Nothing happened in the potty itself, but with the timer set to go off in 15 minute intervals, Jayce would race in, and actually sit on the potty (which he had been refusing to do before.) With the cotton pants on he would realize when he had gone (as opposed to with the Pull Ups), and would tell us when he was wet, so this awareness on his part was a small accomplishment. The first time that we took him to the potty and he was dry, he said, "Mom! Not yucky! All clean and dry!" So I thought his excitement and recognition of this was a small accomplishment as well.

Our first full day was not great. Jayce woke up grumpy and disagreeable, so everything was an issue. It was a bad day to try to get him to do something new, and so he didn't. He ran in the other direction when the timer went off, slunk to the floor when I tried to take off his pants, wouldn't sit on the potty, wouldn't stay on it when I put him there, and wouldn't let me put new pants on him, and stopped telling me when he was wet. He didn't care about his M&Ms or any other fancy incentive. I tried many approaches: I was casual, I was stern, I disciplined him, I played with him-none worked.

He whined, he cried, he kicked, he smacked me. I was tired, my back hurt, I texted Chris enough that he came home a little early and I ran away (upstairs) and let him take over.

But Jayce was great for Chris, he had none of the problems that I'd been having.

I'm hoping that this is a bit like that horrible week of letting your kid cry it out at nap time or bed time: It is really horrible for that week, but you notice a big improvement/complete change by the end of the week. Right?