Potty Training Progress Report -- the 10th day

(for any of you who may be interested, and my apologies if you aren't!)

I started this whole endeavour Wed, April 29th. If Rosebud is at home and awake, she is in underwear, usually without pants or shoes. Sometimes I put a plastic cover on her -- during meals, perhaps, or if we are going for a walk -- but I'm finding once again that I prefer to have instant knowledge of pee happening so that I can really reinforce that peeing = go to the potty now -- not at some unknown future time when I discover that she is wet, or she discovers that the warmth as turned cold. :)

FIVE NEGATIVE THINGS:

1. I'm not being as consistent as I would like.

I still put her in diapers to go out and run errands, go to the park, at Mass and a few miscellaneous other times when I wasn't thinking or had had enough. I need to stop doing this as I know from experience that this really confused Turtle and I think was a main reason that she took so long to get the idea. (Also, Daddy isn't very good about putting her in underwear either, esp. on the weekends -- he thinks its annoying to deal with it, though ultimately he does support the whole thing. . . ) Ultimately I need to just not run errands until the evening when Daddy can be home but it is harder this time around to revolve two girls schedules around one girl needing to be VERY close to a potty.

2. I think Turtle is beginning to resent this process.

She has to wait around to go outside till Rosebud has gone potty. Mommy has to drop everything at any given time (whilst cooking breakfast with Turtle, eating lunch with Turtle, reading books to Turtle, planting flowers with Turtle) to run to the bathroom with Rosebud.

3.For one whole week, Rosebud had no "successes." Of course, one knows that "success" for Rosebud may just mean that she is beginning to connect the cause and effect process, and may have nothing to do yet with making it to the potty. Success is all relative to where we are in the learning process, right? :)

4. She doesn't understand at all that if one is sitting on the potty and one has pee in one's bladder, that one should release it at that time, not 30 seconds later after one has had one's underwear put back on. This is the key. I remember this was the turning point once Turtle got this concept.

5. I don't think this is going to work to have her predictably dry by May 24 (when we leave for my family's beach vacation . . .) but I'll cross that bridge when we come to it . . . I hope . . .

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FIVE POSITIVE THINGS:
1. She usually tells me quite soon when she is wet. It's really cute. She says questioningly "Weh? Weh?" and puts her hand on her underwear. I like the fact that she definitely feels discomfort about being wet and that she knows what wetness is.

2. She is a very willing cleaner-upper. :) She dutifully trots with her wet pants to the diaper pail everytime and obligingly wipes any pee on the floor.

3. She tells me when she's pooping. There have been two occasions in the last day or so that she has gotten half in her underwear and half in the potty. That is success! She gets excited too. :)

4. As of today she has peed in the right place twice! I get excited every time this happens because every time it solidfies in her mind where pee goes that it makes everybody happy. :) Of course, I hope this is counter-acting the 30 other times that she didn't get it right. :)

5. As of yet there has been no pee on the couch, any beds or bedroom rugs, or anybody's lap. Yay!

Bonus -- 6. Mommy doesn't feel like losing her mind yet, and the floors of the house are very clean! :)

Vacuuming in her panties :)