Potty Training Update

Well potty training Miriam isn't nearly as easy as it was to potty train Madeleine (I guess that was the advantage of waiting until she was 3 ;-). But we are still hanging in. So far we have been at it for almost a week. The progress has been slow but we are seeing progress (and that is our main goal).

Initially I had started out putting Miriam in cloth training underwear. After going through all 15 pair that we own in 1 day, I realized that wasn't going to work. I switched her over to pull-ups (pull-ups are disposable training underwear; similar to a diaper but they are thinner and pull on like underwear). After about a day of potty training, I realized that Miriam was totally unaware of when she peed. The first day she had an accident and she wasn't wearing training pants or a pull-up; she freaked out--she had no clue where all this liquid had suddenly come from. I then started to realize that I was going to have to take potty training a lot slower with Miriam.

The good news is that now she tells me EVERY time she is about to pee or if she has an accident. We don't always make it to the toilet in time before she pees in her pull-up, but we started out only making it to the toilet twice a day and now she makes it to the toilet about 6 times a day. So she is doing much better.

Perhaps the biggest thing she has learned is that it is not OK to walk around in a wet pull-up. That was the problem I had with Madeleine. Madeleine didn't care if her pull-up was wet--she treated it just like a diaper. I am not making that mistake with Miriam. We are treating the pull-ups just like cloth training pants--if they are wet, she has to get a new pair. Also, after she has an "accident" she has to sit on the potty and see if she still needs to go.

The bad news about all of this is that she won't be potty trained by Thanksgiving but she will be well on her way. And hopefully she will be potty trained by Christmas. The other downside is that if she doesn't catch on to this a little faster, I might be forced to spend her college savings to cover the cost of all of the pull-ups she is using ;-)