Dry Me a River

As per my last blog, while the boy and I were on the road and Will was left alone to deal with a horrendous home-improvement scenario involving our sewer, Stella was having a spend the night party at Oui Oui’s house in what I’ve come to call Potty Training Boot Camp (speaking of sewer).

We’ve been starting and stopping potty training (PT) now for a year at least.  Ultimately, our lack of progress has boiled down to 4 things:

1)    While Stella gets/got it, she didn’t want it.  No manner of bribery, haranguing, bargaining, or threats would entice her to put her shit where it belongs.

2)    With the communication and behavior issues, honestly PT was the lesser of my concerns.

3)    Laziness on our parts to some degree.  PT is a pain in the ass.  You get to a point where if you have to say “don’t you want to go potty now” one more time you might put your own head in the commode and flush.  And my god do you have to be vigilant!

4)    SOMEONE (Will, damn you) decided to show her the “neat whirlpools” in the bathroom.  She’s now terrified to be anywhere near the tub when the water drains.  Furthermore, any bath toy or cleaning implement has got to come out before the plug is pulled or there will be much hysteria.  This also extends to the commode to some degree, although fortunately toilet paper and poop seems exempt.  Thankfully.

Anyway, Oui Oui requested that I send lots of Big Girl Panties (BGPs) to her house when I packed her bag.  They were going to make a real go of it.  (Oh god.  The puns just keep on giving!)

Oui Oui made PT Boot Camp awesome, complete with a picnic á la Old McDonald’s, shopping for new sparkly things, rummaging through older cousins’ hand me downs for more sparkly things, treats, and with the exception of one accident, keeping her BGPs dry.

Stylin’ in my BGPs!

Look at that face….

We bit the bullet and she wore BGPs to school Monday.  Dry all day, until she and I hit the car for speech.  Ok.  One accident in a day isn’t bad at all.  It’s now Thursday and there has not been one single mishap at school.

And the mermaid dress: beloved so much that we now have 2 so she can wear it twice a week. It’s also even more incentive not to get her clothes all messy.

It’s amazing.  It’s like we snapped our fingers and it’s done.  Or Oui Oui did.  Hooray for Oui Oui and her PT Boot Camp.  I told her she should advertise and charge for this.

Sure, we still have to be vigilant at home and she sometimes “forgets” toward the end of the day, but it hasn’t been bad or even all that messy so far.   I have created a monster through bribery which I’ll have to undo later.  On Tuesday she got a new stuffed kitty which has been named Noodles.  Yesterday, she asked where her treat was.

Wouldn’t it be great if we all got treats for keeping our BGPs dry all day?