Potty time! Excellent!

September 10, 2012

gMum, Lisa shared with us some photos of a one-of-a-kind party she threw for her kiddos. We had to know more. She gladly obliged. Thank you, Lisa. Now we’re super curious: how do you celebrate milestones? And what the heck is a milestone, anyway? Let us know in a comment.

Ok, about the potty party…..  I guess i should start back in March of 2011.  My daughter Merry was 4 (soon to be 5), Hezekiah turned 3 on March 12, David was 19 months old, and Gideon was born (2 weeks late!) on March 16.  With Gideon’s birth we had 3 in full time diapers!  I had hoped to have Hezekiah potty trained before then but he was no where near ready!!  David was showing more readiness for potty training than his big brother!

Over Memorial Day weekend we started trying to potty train both boys (even though David wouldn’t be 2 until August).  By the end of the first week Hezekiah was having some success and showing some promise.  David had done nothing in the potty that whole week.  We decided he wasn’t quite ready and put him back in diapers.  And so began one of the most frustrating and disgusting years of my life!  It was very sloooooow going with the potty training.  It was a good 6 months or more before Hezekiah was “mostly” day time potty trained.  And he wasn’t content just to have an accident and get cleaned up.  He would smear things all over the place and generally make a big mess of things!  In early December David started telling me when he needed to go potty—and would actually go!!  I was so excited!  I thought I’d finally gotten an easy to potty train kid!  He did that for about 2 weeks and then quit.  He decided to join his brother in making things difficult and messy.  My kids have always been very regular poopers….first thing every morning!  I started waking up each morning to my boys covered in poop, smearing it on the walls, on the beds, the window, each other…  I was cleaning it out of underwear, rinsing it out of diapers.  I was up to my elbows in poop every single day!  I tried everything to get them to do it in the potty.  All kinds of incentives and prizes!  And everything worked….for a week or two.  And then they lost interest.  I would ask them, “Why didn’t you tell me you needed to go potty?  Why didn’t you get up and go?”  Their answer was usually, “I didn’t want to.”  It was incredibly discouraging.  I was sure they would never be out of diapers and i would forever be covered in their poop.  One day out of pure frustration and discouragement i declared, “When you guys are potty trained we are going to have a party!!”  And so began something to look forward to and hold on to during the days of poop.  The kids were all excited about it.  And so was I!!  By golly, if we ever reached the day where i could say my children were potty trained *I* deserved a party!!  Some days it was motivation for the boys, and some days it wasn’t.  But from that day on i dreamed about this “potty party” as i scrubbed poop off of textured walls (do you know how impossible a job that is??), changed poopy sheets (again!), wiped it off of window sills, rinsed it out of diapers, scrubbed it out of the carpet, cleaned it off of toys, and gave the boys *another* bath!  I had plenty of time to completely plan that party!  And we talked about it ALL THE TIME!  Finally by June of 2012, a full year after potty training began, i declared Hezekiah (who was now 4 years old!) completely 100% potty trained!!  David stepped it up after that and was declared potty trained by mid July!!  I REJOICED that we only had 1 kid in diapers!! (And then promptly found out that we’d be back to 2 in diapers in another 8 months!)  The potty party was planned for July 28.  We invited all our friends and family to come help us celebrate and find fun new things to do with all these diapers!  They had all been cheering us on toward this day, offering encouragement and suggestions when i was desperate.  For the party i hung string around my living room and used the gDiapers as decorations.  I also printed off pictures of my kids in their diapers over the years and hung them on the line too.  At the party we just played games and ate.  The first game we played i laid the cloth inserts for the diapers in the grass on either side of the front yard.  We divided the kids into teams and gave them a bucket of water balloons.  The goal was to be the team with the most “wet” diapers.  Everyone on the winning team got a “potty prize” (1 m&m from the jar).  After that we went to the clothes line in the backyard and had a relay race.  Each team tried to get their basket of wet diapers hung on the line first.  And of course, the winners all got a potty prize!  Another game we played was with a jar of clothespins.  You put the jar between your feet, held a clothespin to your nose and tried to drop it into the jar while standing up straight—1 potty prize per clothespin in the jar!  The last game was a race to see who could change “Baby Merry” or “Baby Hezekiah’s” gDiaper the fastest.

– Lisa (gMum)