Potty Training Noah

Yes, the dreaded phrase has returned.  We have NOT been looking forward to this.  We decided to try to potty train Noah this summer for several reasons.  First, we think (THINK!) he's ready.  We've looked up signs on the internet, and he meets almost all of them.  They say if that's the case, then it's probably time.  He's almost 2-1/2.  We thought summer would be a good time because I will be home with him most of the time.  We're hoping to be done by the end of summer so that he doesn't have to try to potty train at school.  His school requires kids potty training to wear pull-ups.  We're just simply not fans of pull-ups.  We prefer the underwear approach.  Pull-ups are just glorified diapers in our opinion and don't really help.

Anywho, we're going to Minnesota in a few days, so we're saving the bulk of the potty training until we get back.  Our preferred method for potty training (and what worked well for Abby) is to put him in underwear when we think he's ready.  It's confusing for a kid to have diapers on but then be expected to pee on the potty.  The problem is that we don't want to have him in underwear for the Minnesota trip.  So, we're in kind of this weird waiting time.  What we decided was to have "naked time" every day or so. 

Noah has been sitting on the potty a couple of times a day since about February.  He has only peed ONCE!  Yeah, in all that time, he's peed ONCE!  He's easily been on the potty many hundreds of times.  About a week ago, we started doing a lot of naked time and visiting the potty a lot.  It's overall been a very frustrating experience.  He's usually fine with sitting on the potty and does it with no complaint.  Often he even sits for 15-20 minutes.  I can't tell you how many hours I've spent in that bathroom for the last week.

My goal in the naked time was to get him to understand the feeling of going pee.  I'm not sure he quite understands what it even feels like yet.  So, even if he peed on the floor, I considered it an accomplishment.  He's since peed on the floor 3 or 4 times.  Each time has been after 1-2 hours of naked time.  So, he can certainly hold it for a while (another sign he's ready).  The first time he peed on the floor, he cried.  I guess he thought he was going to get in trouble, who knows.  The second time he laughed.  Each time we remind him that "pee pee" goes in the potty, not on the floor.  We make sure to stay very positive, but he's pretty emotional about the whole thing. 

I think now he's starting to get upset/embarrassed about peeing on the floor, because he doesn't really want to do naked time anymore.  So, I've backed off a bit for these last few days before vacation.  There's really no reason to push it now.  Within a day or two of getting back from vacation, we're going all in....putting him in big boy underwear.....and hopefully not looking back.  I forsee a lot of pee on the floor in our future!