potty training...again

okay, i don't have the pics yet...and that's just pure laziness at this point. but i had a very amusing story to share from this morning that just couldn't wait.

we've started potty training noe again and she seems a lot more willing to cooperate this time. i don't have to entertain her the whole time she's on the potty, which is nice. i did have to bribe her to sit on the potty first, though. of course, it didn't take long for her to realize that sitting on the potty meant she got candy...so she would constantly be wanting to sit on the potty. she didn't want to stay on the potty, though, and would take off again as soon as she had her candy. now t rule is that she gets the candy when she actually "goes" on the potty, which has drastically cut down on the sugar intake of this little girl.

anyway, i found, after a full day of trial and error that i'm sure no one really wants to hear about (it involved a lot of scrubbing of the furniture and floor and has really increased my laundry load) i've found that what works best for her is to run around completely bare bottomed. this makes her hold it as long as she can before she finally has to give in and let it go. yesterday, she just waited until her nap time when i put a diaper on her, then waited until bath time last night (poor mali was in the bath with her...bath time took a little longer than usual last night). while she's running around without her diaper, i am loading her up with juice to make her need to use the potty more often. so, after so much fluids yesterday and not letting it go for so long, today, her eyes were practically floating. anyway, she didn't pee on the potty, so i put her in her chair for breakfast fully expecting her to end up wetting herself. i was not disappointed. but while i was cleaning that up, she's running around the kitchen yelling "pee!". so i ask her if she needs to sit on the potty, and she does. and she pees! woo hoo! so the potty plays the music and i applaud and tell her how good she is and give her candy. so she immediately sits down and pees a little more. more praise and music follow with, of course, more candy. i'm so excited at this point to have made a breakthrough.

i should have held on to my excitement. now, for the past hour, she's been running around without a diaper, peeing on everything! she's peeing on the floor, the couch, on her toys...just no longer feeling the need to hold it without a diaper on! i've been running around behind her with paper towels and disinfectant. i've had her cleaning up after herself (as best as an almost two year old can), i have been encouraging her to sit on the potty...and i am still stepping in puddles, seeing foot prints of urine up and down the hall, find suspicious wet spots on the couch, and i'm pretty sure she peed on the dog. hmm...i may need to reevaluate this a little bit.

as i wrote this, noe climbed up on my lap...and peed on me. then, when i was putting mali down for her nap (not five minutes after noe had peed on me), noe followed me up and peed on my bedroom floor, getting my jeans in the process. it's a good thing i went ahead and wrote this post when i did, because i can see that the humor, from my side at least, is going to fade fairly fast.