Doin' the Potty Dance

Woo Hoo!! Ruthi has been showing signs of being ready to be potty trained for a while now. However, no matter how long she'd sit there, nothing would happen. So honestly, I haven't been trying all that hard.

Today I was reading this post over at Rocks in My Dryer and although Shannon is feeling discouraged at the moment, it for some reason, encouraged me to give this thing a shot.

I began talking to Ruthi about 'big girl panties' and that once she started trying to use the potty, I'd get her some Dora panties. Well, she wanted to try right away.

But of course, nothing happened.

I decided to let her run around diaperless for a bit. We have hardwood floors, so I figured clean up would be no biggie. I did instruct her to stay off the living room furniture.

Within a few minutes, she was "leaking" and wasn't quite sure what to do about it. I ran her to the bathroom, and apparently, she was done.

I realized that the trek to the bathroom was going to prove difficult until she gets a better handle on this. So, I brought the little potty into the kitchen area.

There were 4 or 5 more incidents within a span of 20 minutes. Each time, we'd rush to sit on the potty, but then she would just stop. I realized she was probably stopping during the excitement and then wasn't able to finish.

So the next time I got her to the potty, I sat down in front of her, rubbed her legs and spoke quietly and calmly to her to try to get her to relax.

I then decided to give her an incentive. I told her that if she could get her tee tee into the potty instead of on the floor, she could have a marshmallow. (She loves these!) She was very excited about that.

And I'm not joking, within 5 minutes - she did it - and not just a trickle - a very good amount! I was so proud of her! And she was quite proud of herself too!

And she got her marshmallow. Actually, a few, since they were the mini-ones.

OK, so as I was sitting here typing this, she was sitting in her chair at the table. All of a sudden, she jumped down and sat on her potty.

But nothing happened.

For about 3-5 minutes, she ran back and forth to her potty.

And she went again! She actually felt it coming this time, and got on the potty before she went! I can hardly believe it! Maybe this isn't going to be so difficult after all!

I promised her that if she'd potty every day for this week - a few times, I'd get her some Dora panties at the end of the week. I'll be doing grocery shopping Thursday or Friday, so I'll let her pick some out then.

Yes, I'm quite a happy mommy right now. Now I'm just hoping it continues to go this well.


And you wanna hear something else? CJ, who is 13 by the way, is being VERY jealous over the marsmallows right now! He proclaimed he had tee-tee'd and pooped in the potty, and could he have some marshmallows? I reminded him that he got M&M's when he was potty training. But he can't remember, so he doesn't think it counts.
He also doesn't want Ruthi to be doing this yet, because if she is a quick learner, then she will be trained a lot earlier than he was - and he's not liking that very much. Is he silly or what?

Anyway, she's well on her way....and I'm finally ready for the journey!