Potty Training

So it has been a few months of Corbin asking to sit on the potty whenever he wants a treat and then just hanging out for a random amount of time until his body naturally goes pee. His interest hasn't really died like I thought it would though (I assumed that was just a phase). So now that the holidays are over and things have calmed down a little I decided maybe we can start to step it up a notch and try and teach him to recognize when he needs to pee, rather than just recognizing that he wants a treat. Plus my brother and his wife (mostly his wife did all the work, I assume) started potty training my niece that Corbin plays with once a week, so I was inspired by their efforts.

I decided the best way to teach him was to buy him some underwear and just plan on him peeing his pants a few times. Maybe that wet feeling would help him recognize when he needed to pee. So we went to the store, I let him pick out some cheezy superhero underwear and he ran around looking semi getto in just a pair of Mr. Incredible underwear the first night. Sure enough, he was jumping off a box and peed his pants (the lady at Walmart told us to buy those plastic underwear covers to save the carpet, so luckily clean up was pretty easy). I tried to talk to him and explain that when you wear underwear you have to put your potty in the toilet. Afterwards I felt confident that I had given him a pretty good understanding of this whole "big boy" process with key points and rationalizations.

So sure enough the next morning I dressed him in his second pair of underwear and was in the kitchen doing dishes when I hear him yelling from the bathroom, "Mommy I done, I did it. I want a treat!" I was thoroughly confused, then walked into the bathroom to see him sitting on his little toilet with his underwear still on and a puddle of pee soaked through his underwear and dripping into the toilet. Apparently I wasn't clear in my excellent potty training discussion that you take off the underwear before going pee on the toilet, and he had run in there when he needed to go and sat down on the toilet to pee, just like Mommy had said. He was so proud, and technically he had obeyed the rules and listened to me, fully expecting a treat for his good efforts so I had to reward him anyway, despite having still peed his pants.

Needless to say another discussion followed this experience and he is actually doing surprisingly well at using the toilet. We are quite excited for him, but mostly for ourselves, that's one less diaper change each time he does it right, I figure that's worth paying out a skittle or two.