Our Potty Process

To give our Potty Process a bit of a lighter tone than yesterday's post, I thought I'd post some pics and record how it all went down!  We began with the intention of using Potty Scotty and the One Day Training concept.  So on the morning of our big day, Elias received a wrapped present, which he opened and found his new friend Scotty.  I wasn't sure whether he'd like Scotty or not, since he's never had a human-like doll before, and I thought he could be a little creepy.  Thankfully, Elias LOVED Scotty and took to him right away.  Notice in the pic that Elias is fingering his hair - he loves to play with hair, so I think Scotty's pretty blond hair is why E took to him so well.

What's interesting is that right away Elias started calling him "Baby Scotty," so it was pretty easy to take that and run with it, since the first part of our day was teaching Scotty how to be a big boy and use the potty.  (For those who don't click the links to read about him, Scotty is an anatomically correct doll who can actually wet, so he demonstrates to little boys exactly how to go to the potty.)  So Scotty put on his big boy underwear and learned how to go to the potty, and then Elias got his big boy underwear and started learning how to go to the potty.  This didn't happen as quickly as I had expected it to, but we've already talked enough about that.  We had a little chart on the wall for both Scotty and Elias, and we put stickers on them for each achievement.  This is what they looked like at the end of the second day.  (We stopped putting stickers on Scotty's after the first day.)  Elias really liked that I put their pictures on the charts to know whose was whose!

Elias did a great job of just being willing to hang out and play in his big boy underwear!  We had the whole living room waterproofed because we knew there would be a lot of accidents at first!

I had also bought a lot of underwear because we expected to go through a lot of those at first too!  We just kept them in a stack on the bathroom counter so we could easily access dry ones whenever we needed to!  You'll notice below that Scotty is also in his big boy underwear, and he had a few extra pair in case of accidents too.  (I put Thomas stickers on Scotty's undies so that they would match Elias' Thomas undies.  Elias didn't care as much as I expected he would that Thomas was on his underwear.  But they sure are cute anyway!)

Elias also enjoyed putting stickers on Scotty's belly instead of Scotty's chart.  Whatever you're happy about, bud!  Through the learning process, we discovered a few things that Elias needs in order to be able to use the potty.  First, we learned that he likes demands to be left alone in the bathroom instead of us sitting with him.  So we would just leave him in there with a stack of books he could look at, and he'd go sometimes.  However, most of the time he still just seemed too stressed out to be able/willing to go, so I tried to think of something that would help him relax enough to let it go.  So I pulled out our portable DVD player and put in the Big Kid Central Potty Training Video that Huggies Pull-Ups gives for free*, and I let him watch it when he's on the potty.

He LOVES watching the little songs and activities, and almost every time it will let him relax enough to go.  So that's where we are at the moment!  He's doing GREAT with going on the potty, and he's actually learning a lot by watching the Potty DVD over and over again.  So we're making good progress on becoming a BIG BOY!

*Click here to order your Pull-Ups Potty DVD.  It takes several weeks to arrive, so go ahead and order it even if you're not starting potty training yet!