Potty Success!

About a week after Madison was born, Luke was potty trained - #1 AND #2! He was proficient with #1 on the potty since he was 2, but #2 was an arduous year-long battle. For some reason he had a huge psychological barrier about dropping his nuggets in the vast space below his rear in the toilet. For a year we tried everything - positive reinforcement, bribes, marathon sitting, withholding privileges, waterboarding (just kidding :P)...but Mr. Luke persistently stonewalled any of these efforts. So about a month before Madison's birth, we got desperate and took all the diapers away, explaining to Luke that he's a big boy and big boys do not go to bed with diapers on but pee and poop on the potty. We added "poop on potty" on Luke's responsibility chart (a great buy from the wooden puzzle makers Melissa & Doug), and bribed him the ultimate prize: if he poops on potty every day for a whole week, he will get his long desired big boy training bike. This is an effective motivator because all his friends are riding their big boy/girl bikes at the playground and the peer pressure is almost beyond his tolerance.

At first, he did well and pooped for 4 days in a row. However, on the night after Madison was born when I was staying in the hospital, he pooped in his undies and all previous efforts went down the drain. He kept going in his pants and acted as if he wasn't bothered at all. Matt was exceedingly disappointed (he's the main driver in the whole potty training, known to be sitting patiently on hours with Luke on the potty, and earned the titles "Poop Coach" and "Chief Excretion Officer" in our household) and pulled out the last straw - withholding privileges. Every time Luke went in his pants, Matt took away a favorite toy.:( Thankfully, this tactic worked and kicked started the second round of potty training, which turned out to be a success. Luke earned his big boy bike, and we were beyond relieved to say goodbye to his diaper days (especially now we're back to changing newborn diapers for our new addition)!

Special thanks and praise for Daddy's great work. We couldn't have achieve this without your patience and coaching (he even made up a poop chant for the process: Gotta poop! Gotta poop! Squeeze it out! Squeeze it out! :) ).