potty trained!

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Done with these!

Somehow, in the midst of being pregnant, having a baby, and caring for a newborn, we have managed to get our son potty trained.  Both poop and pee (with the exception of night-time).  And he can use a big potty.  We don't even have a potty seat. He's 2.75 years old (as compared to the 3.25 that E was when she potty learned).

I'm a little befuddled as to how this happened.  I'd been inconsistent for weeks, months.  Jude gets home for Baby Watch 2011, and decides to work with N for a day or two. Since Jude was working with him, It helped me be a little more consistent, too.  And it just... happened.  He was in underpants all day, and he would let us know if he needed to use the potty.  The first week or so, there were occasional accidents. Still are, but usual it involves having trouble getting his pants off fast enough.  We have been using skittles as a bribery tool, but if he doesn't mention it, I don't give it.  Distract him enough, and the skittle is forgotten.  Soon, the container of skittles will run out, and we'll be pretty much done with the "training" part, and working on the maintenance part!

He sits on the toilet backwards, and can climb up on the seat himself. (Thanks for the idea, mom-in-law!) Sitting backwards on the seat allows him to be stable when on the potty, and to see what's going on.  This is kind of a pain, in that going potty requires the complete removal of shoes, socks, pants and underpants.  I've been working with him to sit on the potty forwards (with support) for the times when we are out and about and he needs to go.

I'm not awesome enough to have cloth trainers for night time.  We have some disposable diapers that we're using up, and after those run out, I have some pull-up left over from when E was potty learning.  It's entirely possible that those will last until he's consistently dry at night.  It's not that we have so many diapers and pull-ups, but he is dry often enough that we're not going through them very fast.  Not anything for me to be sad about!

At first I thought that having a kid who is potty learning, while dealing with a newborn would be tough, but it's not been too bad.  Compared to having two in diapers, it's just... different.  Neither is better or worse, at this point.  It's definitely been nice to not be washing diapers every single day in order to keep up with them.  I'll be posting later about how cloth diapers have been working this time around with Adelle.