Wrong Motive

Oh, but it feels so right!!

We are on day 2 of potty training Lucy. Now, I was (and am) a big believer in just waiting until the child expresses interest to potty train. However, this time a different motive came along and I decided to run with it. It's called panties are cheaper than diapers. I know, its wrong of me, but it seems to be working (sort of...)!

Lucy has some friends who have started to potty train that are around the same age, we were running out of diapers, and she does ask all the time to sit on the potty, its just nothing has ever come of it. I'm too impatient to wait for her to do something interesting and most of the time I really don't want to take her diaper off when she requests to sit on the potty. She could be ready, right? Was it just me that wasn't ready for 6 months of long waits in the bathroom, bathroom stops every 10 minutes, cleaning up mess after mess and one load of laundry after the other? (Why did I want to do this again? Oh yeah, money...)

So yesterday she ran around pantless most of the day. We had two very successful attempts on the "tinkle bowl" as she has started calling it. The first came with a very surprised look on Lucy's face. I don't think she was expecting it. We basically drowned her in juice and water every time she wanted to sit on the toilet, and when she was successful she got a piece of chocolate. However the rest of the day we were cleaning up messes on the carpet and tile. So not a bad day one.

Today we spent the morning at a water park with some friends, so that really didn't count as training time, and then came home for a nap. So day two didn't really start until 3:00. This time she got to wear big girl pants around the house. Wow! She felt so big and proud, it was cute! And then the ah-ha moment hit. We had just sat down for dinner, soup and smoothie (both tinkle inducing...) and she had an accident in her chair. With her pants being wet she seemed rather surprised, we ran to the toilet but nothing more happened. So, we went back to the table. A few more sips of smoothie and I noticed Lucy look down at herself, I asked if she needed to use the potty and got a confirmation. SUCCESS!! Pants dry and tinkle in the toilet. The ah-ha moment finally came! She then went back to dinner and 10 minutes later, jumped out of her chair and said, "I need to go potty" so we ran and success again! Ah, maybe my motive won't be so wrong after all, she simply needed a nudge in the right direction. And a motivated mommy.