Me go potty now

I woke up this morning (at 6am) to cries of "me go potty now" repeated over and over with increasing urgency. Because Lance is closest to the door, I woke him up to go deal with it. And since one was up, it was just a matter of seconds before the other one woke up and starting demanding her first milk of the morning. Our roles in the morning are pretty much automatically assigned, the one with boobs deals with the baby, the other one gets Hannah.

I know when it comes to potty training, everyone has an opinion. Do it this way - no, do it this way. And everyone is also more than happy to share their own kids' potty training experiences…even if it was decades ago. I got tired of hearing, "oh, well my child was potty trained by the age of 1" or "you know, my child started potty training when they were only 6 months old". It seems that the older the remember-er, the earlier the age of training began. I chalk that up to old person remembering incorrectly syndrome. Either way, I was not going to be putting Hannah on the potty at 6 months old - shit, she couldn't even crawl, why try and potty train?

We started potty training when Hannah was around 2 years old, she started showing some interest and so I went with it. She did surprisingly well and was thrilled to be wearing big girl underwear. But we had a setback when she got a UTI. All women know the signs of one of those, they hurt, they hurt, they hurt. And here my poor little girl had one :( It made her not want to potty at all. But, once the infection cleared up, we were able to try again.

And here she is, 2.5 and almost completely potty trained. She'll tell us when she has to go potty and off she goes! She loves wearing undies to bed for nap time and waking up dry. That's the first thing out of her mouth, "I dry!! I dry!!!" "Me no go potty in my undies!!" It is so cute to see the pride in her achievement :) And this morning, she woke up after having slept 10+ hours, completely dry and asking to go potty. That's awesome! She was way proud of herself and we showered her with praise. I know that nighttime potty training is still a little ways off yet, going that long is an awful lot to expect at her age. But we're getting there. And there is still the occasional accident, she'll suddenly look up from what she is doing with wide eyes and say, "uh, me go potty now" - when she uses that tone, I know that she needs a bit of assistance getting to the bathroom quickly because she can't unlock her legs from the "I'm holding it in tightly" position.

Turns out, I'm one of those mommies who is more than happy to share potty training experiences! But, I'm also pretty sure our experiences are very normal and average. It seems to be pretty common to try, to have a setback, to try again, to succeed. However and whenever it happens, it is a big deal and it is something for them to be very proud of.

You may remember this video I took of her after a particularly proud moment on the potty. That was one of my "techniques" - let's call your friends and tell them you went potty on the potty and they'll be so proud of you too! She was a couple months past her 2nd birthday, so the vocabulary wasn't quite there, but you can certainly get the gist of what she was saying :)