Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Potty Training for Dummies

1. Pick a day in the winter. It should be a day when your child most likely won't want to drink too much water so she won't be prompted to go to the bathroom too often.

2. Make sure that your older children are just getting over nasty colds/fevers/coughs and still need some extra TLC to make it through the day.

3. Buy a cute little gadget called a Potty Watch and set the timer to go off every 30 minutes. You won't get tired of hearing "Oh My Darling", "London Bridge", or "Are You Sleeping" every 30 minutes at all. You will, in fact, be so inspired that you can jump up and down, cheering your child on as they run to the potty.

4. Be sure and let your child run around the house in just her underwear. It will cause great distress in your 5 year old son because he "hates seeing Tessa's underwear all day", but his whining won't bother you at all.

5. Make sure that, about 2 hours into the process, you start feeling sick with what you assume is the cold that has had your house under fire for the past few days. Just lay on the floor in a patch of sunlight, listening to your son whine about seeing his sister's underwear and waiting, waiting, waiting for the Potty Watch to go off.

6. Wake up in the middle of the night after your first day of potty training with a horrible cough and a fever, ensuring that there is no way you will feel like continuing the potty training process the next day.

7. Check your stash and see that you only have three diapers left.

8. Smile as you remember that you probably have two in the car that you can use.

9. Smile even bigger as you remember the Princess Pullups you bought several months ago when you first thought about potty training but were quite frankly too lazy to attempt it.

10. Hope you haven't messed up the process by starting and then skipping a day (or two or three, as motivation for this particular parenting process is hard to come by in your house).

There you have it. The Wright Family's Guide to Potty Training for Dummies.

Good luck with that, Dummy.

3 comments:

Lori said...

LOL....oh the joys of potty training!!! I hated that darn timer by the time we were done with it!

Mom said...

I am beginning to think that this
blog is "just your way of venting."
Is it working????

But, don't stop I love it and it's
quite entertaining!!!! Especially,
since I need laughs at the end of
each day.

Love

Mom

mstokes said...

I don't need to tell you this but - stick with it. You have bad days & then when you least expect it they surprise you! It is really rewarding to do something hard - for the both of you!