Mommy woke up on Monday morning and got the crazy idea that it was time to potty train Gilley! The process kicked off at about 9AM and we were both impressed with his performance right out of the gate. I'll try to save you the potty details...but he started out by dropping a deuce - started....as in before he even peed in the potty! We were excited to NOT have to deal with the situation where kids are afraid or hesitant to take care of that business on the potty.
Since we really hadn't been planning on jumping into this whole process of potty training right now, we were completely unprepared for it... no M&M's, no pull ups for evenings out and no underwear. The underwear situation was quickly resolved by pulling out a pair of Ava's old Dora underwear... which Branson loved. Of course we didn't want to leave him in those for too long, so after a morning of potty training success we told Branson he could go to the store to pick out some underwear. He could not have been more excited. He picked out some Thomas the Train underwear and some Cars underwear - which he then proceeded to show anyone who would pay attention. He has since burned through several pairs of those with his accidents, but the underwear has definitely been a good incentive as he loves to wear clothes with cars and trains on them.
We made the mistake of rewarding Branson with his first success with a little spoon of ice cream. Thus began Branson's manipulation of the reward system... The kid has some seriously precise bladder control. He would ask to be put on the potty about every 5 minutes and would squeeze out about half an eyedropper of pea, ask for a treat, and then do it all over again in another 5. He has never had so many sweets in his entire life - he is loving it!
We eventually transitioned him off ice cream and onto other things like reeses pieces, raisans, and grapes. He also had a number of accidents which normally make a kid sad, but not him. For Branson it meant he got to pull on another cool pair of undies - car undies, train undies, cartoon undies, etc... We started to wonder if he was having accidents on purpose (which really would not make them accidents I guess...) just so that he could put on a new exciting pair of underwear. Watching him delicately walk around bow-legged after getting his pants wet was pretty darn funny but he did not like it which was good - there needs to be some negative incentives, right?!
We are now on day 3 of this whole deal and he definitely seems to get how this whole thing works. He is even telling us when he has to go which is better than I expected since we weren't really sure if he was ready. We'll be surprised if this thing sticks, but at least he is getting some serious practice in.
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