I can't believe it....

....but my little boy is potty trained!

Yes, the rest of this post is going to talk about pee and poop. Sorry. If you don't want to read, go ahead and close the window. I'll try and keep it as G rated as possible. And yes, this post is quite a bit late, but that's okay too. Two months late - he potty trained at the end of November. We're still just as proud now though :)

We had tried once before this summer right when he turned two, and that was a lot more difficult cleaning up accidents, and he showed us he wasn't ready. That was pretty frustrating for three days, so I was a little worried about this time. Turns out, it was good learning and good practice for all of us, as he took to peeing so smoothly!

We started over our birthday weekend (happy birthday to us!) and planned on staying home all weekend. Henry did wonderfully, peeing in the potty like a champ. We moved the little potty chair all around as he played with no pants on. A timer for "potty time", The Potty Movie from the library, lots of potty books from the library, potty dancing, and M&Ms worked like a charm. We also had made a book with all the steps of going potty, and took pictures of Henry acting them out, and I wrote the words, which he loved, and he got to put his stickers in the back. He was really successful, and really proud of himself! He graduated into underpants the next day, and was so excited to wear his underpants. He would shout, "big boy unnapants EVERY - DAY!" Apparently "boy said that potty movie" according to Henry, but I watched that movie a million times with him and the boy doesn't actually say that. But whatever worked! He got to go with mommy to the mall and pick out new big boy underpants, and even went potty at the mall! We had a fun little date doing that - he walked and held my hand so nicely, was really excited to be able to pick both packages of underpants instead of just one, held his bag really proudly as he walked out, and we even split a Wendy's frosty as a treat on the way home - lucky boy!

Going poop was a little more of a challenge, since he didn't really want to go and then got blocked up so it was painful when he did go. This made the next couple of days a challenge, as he started to say "no potty" and not want to go pee even, but we pushed through because he was still so proud and excited when he did. Grandma and Grandad and Uncle Andrew and Aunt Allison all came for Thanksgiving just in the nick of time to provide extra support and cheering, potty dancing, and potty parades! Thanksgiving weekend was mostly spent with no pants on - by Henry only, of course! And he got to go with the grandparents to the toy store for staying dry! In about seven days, he was fully day time trained, took over telling me when he needs to go, going potty when we are in a public place, wearing big boy underpants every day and pretty much got pooping figured out. Although he still occasionally has accidents when he gets excited about playing and forgets to go, but this is happening maybe once a week. Pretty great! Pull ups at nap time, and diaper at night still, but we will be working on those in due time.

I am so proud of him! It is hard for me to believe that my little baby is a big boy who is potty trained. I didn't think this day would come. The whole experience went a lot smoother than I thought it would, although there were those few couple of days when I thought I would lose my mind and and I wondered if we should give up. But I'm glad we stuck with it, and we didn't have to give up, but it would have been okay if we did. Overall, so much smoother and less messy with far fewer accidents than the first time we tried. I'm really thankful that we got this project done before new baby comes, because I was really motivated to do that if we could. I know now how much time and effort and attention and laundry and cleaning it takes! And hopefully, it will be in enough time for potty training to really stick so he won't want to go back to diapers when the baby comes.

And of course, some G rated pictures of the process -

Sitting on the couch, watching the potty movie, sporting big boy underpants and a towel to sit on of course

A potty parade! The best reward ever

So proud of our big boy!