Potty Trained (officially and completely)

Last year -- June 8th to be exact -- we blogged that Riley had a renewed interest in using the toilet after he started preschool. After seeing his classmates using the toilet, he had all the motivation needed to be day-trained. After a disastrous attempt to go cold-turkey about five months before, I'm glad I took the advise of moms that say to wait until your child wants to. Most kids till bow to peer pressure -- I mean, no kid gets on the kindergarten bus in diapers, right?

At that time, I didn't even bother with the night training, since he always had a wet diaper in the morning, even after I cut off his liquids late in the afternoon and peeing before bed. He's a very heavy sleeper and so it seemed he couldn't wake up during the night. No biggie -- one nighttime diaper was fine with me.

Fast forward to May of this year -- Riley began talking about wearing his underwear to bed and as he was sometimes dry in the morning, I began letting him do so. Initially, I was getting him up at least once or twice to pee, since he still couldn't wake up on his own when the urge was there. I was still having to change both the waterproof top sheet as well as the waterproof mattress cover, not how I want to spend my early morning hours. To avoid this, I would get him up just before I went to bed around 11p and again around 5:30a when Jonathan got up for work.

Then, at the beginning of June, I only got him up once, just before I went to bed. He continued to keep his pants dry for the rest of the month, except for one night when he was up late at a friends and his schedule was off.

He was doing so well that starting in July, I stopped getting him up at 11p to see if he could stay dry. Well, I'm happy to report he has been dry every morning since and has been able to wake up in the early morning hours when he's felt the urge to pee. We were putting stickers on his calendar and giving him a reward of two chocolate chips as something to look forward to. Here's a picture of his calendar at the end of the month:
















And as a reward to reaching such a big milestone, we took him and Kendall to a splash park in Denver called the Pirates Cove. Doesn't this look fun??

























Both kids had a blast and so did we! This is a city-owned park that has something for all ages. Several zero-depth areas for young toddlers as well as shallow pools and play equipment for Riley's age and older. After five hours they were wiped, but Riley was still sad to have to leave.

The only pics we managed to get were during one of our rest periods. Here Riley's drinking the rest of my sweet tea:














Kendall prefers Riley's water bottle to her own:














Note the man in the green shirt. Kendall was waving to him all afternoon. He said it made his day. My girl already knows how to "work it" with the men...














One of her many waves to Mr. Green Shirt:














and again...














I've said it before... I love seeing my kids grow up and mature. The expense of the diapers has never been a big issue for me (I buy cheap Target ones, for starters); I get great delight in seeing them reach milestones and this is a BIG one. I'm glad that I was able to let go and allow him to reach this at his own pace, rather than pressuring him when he clearly wasn't ready and making us both frustrated. Once he decided he wanted to be like his friends, it was really rather easy.

We're both so proud of our Riley-boy!!

(one down, one to go!)

Shelby