Proceed to Potty

So, it was high time Avery learn to use the potty.  We tried many half-hearted efforts:  putting him on the toilet every 10 minutes (he would go in between those time periods), rewarding him with M&Ms (he seemed to not really care), and throwing him into big-boy underwear (he peed through it again and again).

And then my dear friend, Artie, posted on Facebook that his second boy was potty trained.  After smashing my keyboard in jealous frustration, I managed to peck out a note to him begging him to tell me his secrets.  And he did.  Armed with new information, here's what I did:

1) We bought a kiddie potty.  I wasn't a big fan of the idea of cleaning this thing out every time we went, but he just wasn't motivated to run to the bathroom, even with a training seat on the toilet.  It didn't scare him, but he just couldn't do it.  So, we bought a Cars potty at Walmart and put it in the corner of the living room right where he could get at it.

Vrrooooooom!

2) We embraced the naked.  On a day where we had no plans (except going to Walmart to buy the potty) I took off all of his clothes and let him run around with nothing on.  He loved it.  Granted, most of that time he absent mindedly played with his penis, but hey, he's his dad's son.  Ha ha . He loved yelling "I wear NO CLOTHES!"

3) I set the timer.  I put the microwave clock on a 30 minute timer and decided that if he didn't go to the potty (or pee in the living room) on his own, he was going to sit there for 5 minutes every 30 minutes.

Immediately after this, he told me he had to potty, ran to the corner of the room, and used the potty.  WHAT?!  Assuming it was a fluke, I did this:

4) Danced like a maniac.  I danced around and screamed like he won the Nobel Prize for Urination (p.s., what would THAT competition be like).  He was moderately amused.

I cleaned out the little bit of pee in there, set it back up, praised him again, and reminded him where he needed to go.  Ten minutes later, he announced he had to pee-pee and ran to the corner AND WENT AGAIN!  I almost yelled "Holy Shit, it's working!" but he's in a repeating phase, so I'd rather him NOT say that at day care.  Again, I did #4.  He did this several more times during the morning with no accidents.  I was nervously excited.  Eventually it was nap time, so:

5) Naps = Diapers.  He already sometimes pees through diapers if he sleeps a long time, and sometimes poops in his sleep.  I want to avoid as much mess as possible, so it's back to diapers while he sleeps and can't consciously run to the potty.  And once he woke up....

6) Look out for poop!  I hate that my life has come to talking about this, but Avery's an afternoon pooper.  So once the nap was over, he was naked again, and watching television, I watched him like a hawk.  He enjoys yelling "I'M HIDING!" as he ducks behind the couch to take a dump in his diaper.  Under my watchful eye, he had nowhere to hide.

Hiding and pooping at the same time.  Seriously, that's Avery's butt.

And that's all we did!  Lo and behold, with only a few minor accidents that usually took place when he was too distracted with something to realize he needed to go to the bathroom, we went on his own!  He'll be playing and then loudly announce, "I HAVE TO GO PEE PEE!" and he'll just head over to the potty and go!  First while naked, then with underwear, then with full pants! He even made it through the night dry (although I did put a waterproof sheet down and put him in two pairs of underwear).  Fingers crossed, but we might have a potty trained kid on our hands, hallelujah!  I can't thank Artie enough!!