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On the pot.

Potty training. Do any of us enjoy this time of our child’s life? No.

Jaia was easy. I don’t remember many obstacles as she trained. She almost did it herself, with lots of dancing and celebrating by us when she had success. Before she was 2 years old, we were done. No more diapers.

Wes sailed by his second birthday without even looking in the direction of a potty. Not his thing. And not for lack of me trying.

But a few months after, I decided it was time to try again. And this time I took the advice of the many moms who have raised boys before me and instead of sitting him on the potty, I stood him up and made it fun.

First we tried using cheerios in the toilet for target practice. Fun, but lost it’s allure quickly. And then it came to me…what if he could change the colour of the water? Genius!! Food colouring! In went a few drops of blue and the rest, as they say, is history.

I’m not going to say there were no accidents. There were. Two within 20 minutes at Ikea one day, in fact. But with some patience, he figured it out and is 100% a pee pee potty user.

Number Two, though, not so easy. Our success rate is about 1%.

After doing some reading, I found that this is apparently a very common situation parents find themselves in. Potty triaining typically happens in two stages. As this was not the case when Jaia trained, I was unaware of how hard it could be to convince a little dude to wait it out and do his business on the toilet.

I tried EVERYTHING. And my last resort was to entice him with a BIG reward. Wes loves dressing up. And he adores Spiderman. I did what any desperate mama would do and I found him a Spiderman costume and hung it in the bathroom. Strange decor you say? Well, I say I’m brilliant. Each visit to the bathroom led to a conversation about the costume and a friendly reminder about how we could get to wear the costume.

The first 5 days had the discussion fall on deaf ears.

And then yesterday…

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