This week I bought Victoria her very own big girl knickers. Not that it was that big of a deal as she has been wearing Kathleen's knickers for about a month now. Before that she was in Pull Ups for about a month.This time round I've been a bit more hesitant about potty training. With Kathleen I just took the plunge and put her straight into knickers (after making a big fuss and taking her out shopping especially to buy big girl knickers). But with Victoria I was a little more scared to take the plunge. So we took the intermediate step of wearing Pull Ups first. However they didn't seem much different from wearing nappies. She was mostly dry but on the times she had accidents she didn't seem to really notice.
The other thing holding me back was the timing of when Victoria would go toilet. While she was good at doing wees when I would put her on the potty, she would usually do number twos only in her nappy. I didn't quite know how to handle this. I finally settled on bribery. Now if she goes in the toilet she gets a lolly. I'm thankful to say she has never had an accident since we started this. Now every time Victoria goes to the toilet she sings to herself "I go poos on potty I get lolly". Not sure how I'm going to get out of giving her lollies when the time comes but for now I'm still happy to do so.
Victoria also learned quite a while ago (like maybe six months ago?) that the best way to get out of eating her dinner was to announce she needed to "go toe-lit". Because like the good "stick-them-on-the-toilet-every-time-they-ask" parent, I would quickly grab her and take her potty as soon as she said she needed to. She very quickly learned that if she had had enough of eating and sitting still, all she had to do was say she needed to go toilet and I would get her out of the highchair and take her off to the bathroom. Now we're not stupid, we knew exactly what she was doing and how she was trying to manipulate us. So a few months back we called her bluff and said no. She wasn't bluffing and proceeded to go in her pants. Gross! This made me even more nervous about putting her in knickers. However we seem to be doing a lot better now. No more highchair accidents and we often try and get her to go toilet before dinner. This hasn't stopped her trying to get out of dinner by professing a need to go. But she has been able to hold on if we say no, so that is an improvement.
Over summer Victoria also spent a lot of time running around outside naked. If she needed to go in the grass she would, no big deal. Last week I took her and the dogs to the dog park. She needed to go toilet so I said to go in the bushes. So she walked in, squatted down and went wees. Without taking her trousers off first!!! So the poor little thing had to walk about with wet trousers until we got home. That'll teach her.-Megz
