We've entered another delightful phase of potty training. And of course I have to blog about it, because this is my revenge for the torment she put me through along the way. In twenty years, when Madeline is appalled at how much personal information about her bodily functions I published for the world to see, I'll just smile and know that she got hers. On the bright side, Madeline has pretty much potty trained herself in the past three days. She knows when to go, she goes in without being reminded, she does everything herself, and she's as proud as a peacock. Incidentally, we didn't try any new tactics on her. She just decided it was time. Which drives me nuts, but I'm not going to complain too loudly since she's doing it. My kid is using the bathroom for its intended purpose! The excitement level around here is somewhere between giddiness and awe. If she keeps it up for a few more days we'll probably be breaking out the caviar and sparkling apple cider.
However, it's not all rainbows. We now have several new problems: in our enthusiasm to get her excited about the process, we slowly upped the ante from stickers to candy to wrapped presents for successful potty outings. Now that she has more control over the process, she manipulates the system to produce a success about twenty times a day. And bankrupting our present factory. So now we have to figure out how to ratchet down the magnitude of the rewards without inducing a potty strike. Because Madeline would totally go back to peeing her pants every single time on purpose just to teach me a lesson. She already has a fit if she gets the wrong present or if we don't accept without hesitation her declaration that she has successfully gone for the fifth time in twenty minutes. (On a side note, we're having a great debate about the fine line between letting her know we trust her and still facing the reality that a two year old's definition of "going potty" might be different than ours. Oh, the fun philosophical debates! Who knew potty training was so full of deep questions?) We also have to figure out how to get her from Pull-ups into regular underwear, because she has hysterics if we suggest the idea. Basically, we're just not going to mess with the situation for at least a week, because we're much too relieved that she's finally made some progress and might be totally potty-trained by kindergarten. Maybe. I won't hold my breath.
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