Milestone

Whelp, Hailey did it..she is now officially Potty-Trained!! Three cheers for Miss Hailey Ann!!

Actually she has been for about 3 or 4 weeks now, but I am just now finally getting around to blogging it. She did really well and I am pleased to brag that she only had about 2 accidents and none of the yucky kind..Yeah for me on that one!!..LOL

I have really been pretty fortunate, because all 3 of my kids have been easy in this area. Believe me this had nothing to do with me or my parenting skills. I have however, found a few little things that help this transition to go more smoothly, at least for my kiddos.

The major key I think in every child is they have to be ready and able to communicate. This of course means that there wasn't a MAGIC age that I expected my kids to been trained by, or even an age that made me start working with them. I just kinda followed their lead. One major sign that all my kids sent me was waking up in the mornings and from nap time with a dry diaper. That was always my cue that they were starting to be ready. Then, when they were able to tell me if they needed their diaper changed I was like Okay here we go....

I know their are various ways to actually train them and some work for some children and others work for other children, but this is what worked for me.
1. I would first set aside about 1 week and plan on not really going anywhere (except the obvious, store, church and such).
2. I then would buy their favorite candy and show them where I was keeping it and tell them that it was ALL theirs.
3. I would let them help me pick out some "big-girl" panties (big-boy undies for the boys..hehe) and explain to them that their favorite character liked to be clean and dry.
4. I would set a timer for 20 min and every time the buzzer went off I would ask the usual questions. If they didn't need to go I wouldn't force them, but I would make them show me WHERE ( they would point to the toilet) they were supposed to go. Then the timer was set and this cycle started all over again in 20 min.
The timer thing only had to last 2 days for all the kids, and then by that time they were coming and telling me, which meant we were good to go.

Hailey was fully potty trained in about a week (even nights) and I am soo happy that the buying diaper days are done...

Here are a couple of pics that I snapped of her while she was being introduced to the world of potting on the potty...

Here she is sitting on the potty..I think she was a little surprised that I was holding a camera...


And now she is figuring out that I am taking a pic and she is Protesting!!


Finally she turned her back and wasn't about to turn back around again!! LOL

So their you have it, One milestone down and now if I could just break her of the pacifier ( I started that today) we would be in "Big-Girl" business.