My New Favorite Accessory

Ha!  You may have expected to see a stylish new pair of shoes, cute new handbag, or funky new necklace in this post, but NOPE!  My favorite new accessory is the potty chair!  My oldest son is about to turn three (gasp!) and will be starting a preschool program in September.  Along with preschool comes the mandatory potty training.  I thought the potty training would be my most trying experience as a parent, to-date, but (dare I say it:) its been smooth so far!

Advice: I have none.  I don't know what we did, but in less than 7 days, our son was full potty trained, without much prompting from us.  We introduced him to the potty over a year ago, letting him sit on it, play with it (yuck?), and go potty when he felt like it.  We didn't force anything because he wasn't too interested.  Then we got some cool big boy underpants and he wore them a couple times, but he wasn't too excited about that, either.  So, as you can imagine, I was pretty freaked out about the preschool potty training deadline looming overhead.

One day our boy woke up and when we asked if he wanted to wear big boy underware he said, "Sure!".  So we said, "Ok, grrrrrrreat!", and we ran with it.  That day he did all his business (#1 and #2) on the potty!  And that was that.  I'm pretty sure it was successful because we really did wait until he was ready.  Let's face it: we were ready a year ago - but he was not.

I've been super reluctant to call him "potty trained", worried about a relapse or something tragic like that.  But, over a month in, I think we're safe.  He even got his "potty present" yesterday after such a good job of doing the big boy potty.

Back to my favorite new accessory...

When we started really doing the potty thing about a month ago, I started toting the potty with us to the park, the store, playdates - you name it.  Leaving the house was like this:

Kids have shoes: check.

Car keys: check.

Wallet: check.

List: check.

....

oh yeah - Potty: check!

We kept it in the car, but we ran out of the store on several occasions to let him do his business where he was more comfortable.  By now, we have the public restroom thing down, so my new favorite accessory gets to stay home a little more.  I can't say I'm feeling too bad about that, it really wasn't going to go with my fall wardrobe anyway.