{ potty time }

Over the past few months, Oliver and Stella began showing a more serious interest in the potty. A typical instance, O or S or both would tear off their diaper and exclaim that they had to go potty before failing to deliver, then would often top things off by throwing a tantrum about putting their diaper back on. Eventually, we began to have the occasional success story, but they were few and far between.

This in-between stage proved much more difficult to manage than diapers, so we took the plunge almost three weeks ago. With the extra hands of Grandma and Grandpa C around for a few days mid-week and a day off for dad on Friday, we started talking up the idea of getting rid of diapers and switching to underwear.

With a bag of M & M's in the house and a sticker chart made, we put O and S in underwear on that Tuesday morning. They were excited about it and quickly got the hang of going potty to get a M & M. Overall the day was a huge success with Oliver only having one small accident.

A lot of people do a true "three day method" where you don't leave the house for three days but we had ECFE on Wednesday morning and I decided to just go with it and see what happened. Oliver had two accidents and Stella made it through class with none. The next few days went great, except for the fact that they wouldn't poop (did you notice on the chart that there are no stickers over the "X's" for poop?!). Sorry if this is TMI but no poop in the potty OR in their underwear for either for 2.5 days. They would ask for a diaper when they needed to go and I held out and wouldn't give them one until they were hysterical after 2.5 days because they were so uncomfortable from holding it.

They continued to do well with pee - Stella has had only one accident since switching to the underwear. Oliver's last accident was ironically when we were at Target, in the toy aisle, picking out his toy for doing so well with potty training. Ha!

They still ask for a diaper to poop so once a day we put one on them, they poop, and then go right back to underwear. I've heard this is fairly common and know they will eventually do it. Any moms out there reading who have been through something similar, let me know if you have any tips on making the transition easier for them! Otherwise we'll just continue to wait. I've tried some pretty big bribes and even those don't seem to peak their interest.

Another transition that makes us realize they are growing up so fast!