Elise Potty Training Update

Oh Elise, potty training has been such an adventure! She has been mostly potty trained for a long time. I'd say at least 6 months, if not more, but we're still not totally there. Our big hurdle for the past 6 months has been her car seat. For whatever reason, she liked to use the car seat as a potty chair. I'd take her potty before we left the house or wherever we were and when we arrived at our destination, even if it was only 10-15 minutes later, she'd have a surprise waiting for me! It blew my mind. Most people I knew said their kids hated having accidents in their car seat but then one of my mom friends said her daughter had the same problem and I finally felt some solidarity! Fist bump for those mommas tirelessly cleaning out car seats, or like me, so over cleaning them they just had their child sit on a cloth diaper to soak up the potty and continued to use a dirty seat for a day or two afterward... We tried doggy pads in the car seat but they never worked well enough and even when they kept her seat dry, the buckle part would get wet. It was a mess. Then I finally came up with something that worked! I started carrying around a container of mini-M&M's Elise got for Christmas and gave her one every time we arrived somewhere and her seat was dry. It took one time and that was it, she stopped dirtying her seat every time! I don't know why I didn't think of it before, I guess because she was fully potty trained everywhere else and I'd never used treat incentives with her. If I offered her a treat to get on the potty when we were potty training, she'd throw herself on the ground and scream, insisting I just give her one without her doing anything! That ended the treats right then and there!

The best part of this is that she likes to be a big girl and pull up her pants on her own, tucking her shirt into her undies every time!

Since I started using M&M's, she has only had a couple accidents in her car seat. The last time we were in a hurry to get home from a Super Bowl party at 9:30 pm and I forgot to take her potty before we left the party, so that was mostly on me. It has been amazing! She's now fully in undies and does an amazing job. She still has accidents at times but they are few and far between. She likes to keep me on my toes though. The first day I started giving her M&M's for a clean car seat she went 2 days straight without a single accident. I was so stoked and was all, "Oh yeah, she's fully potty trained, no looking back," but then the following day she pooped her pants at home in the room with her potty chair after I'd headed to the restroom and told her to go to the potty while I was going, so not her best moment! There have been a few times when we get to the car and she refuses to get in the car seat and then I realize it's because she's pooped her pants. And that's after having gone to the bathroom before heading to the parking lot so I think she's still a little iffy on going poop in a public restroom. She has done it a few times but I think her biggest thing is she doesn't want to sit long enough to go. I don't know, it's hard to understand the mind of a 2 year old. She cries when she poops in her pants because she hates the way it feels but yet she does it...

She says, "But I'm so cute!"

I forget where we were but I was trying to get her to go potty before we left and she was not having it. I offered her an M&M if she'd try to potty for me and she refused, even trying to run out of the bathroom. Then I told her if she'd go potty, I'd give an M&M to Carter too. She quickly ran over and went right away. She sure loves her brother and would do darn near anything for him. I love that! She is such a sweet girl and I'm so glad I'm almost done with cleaning poop out of pants! It's so much easier the 2nd time around. With Carter it felt like he'd never be fully potty trained but now it's hard to remember him ever not being potty trained and I don't ever have to worry about him not going when he needs to, so I know she will get there soon and these moments of cleaning poop out of all the cracks of her undie area in the parking lot of Target will be distant memories. Until then I will be toting my mini-M&M's in my purse along with 3-4 changes of underwear and pants and will make sure to take lots of long deep breaths before speaking when I find a lump in her backside! To celebrate how well she's doing, she gets to pick out some PJ Mask undies tonight. They don't have them in stores so we'll be ordering from Amazon. She loves Carter's PJ Mask undies and he's sweet enough to share with her but both times she wore them out and about, she pooped in them. I joked that she was marking them as her own, but seriously sister needs some of her own!

This time her dress was tucked into her undies!