Little Man E's Potty Training Time {08.2007}

Well, we have been working with Little Man E for months now--trying to get him to use a potty chair, and he was just sitting on the toilet, but he wouldn’t actually go. I have great motivation though, because we are thinking about when we want to add our next child to the mix, and I really really don’t want 3 kids in diapers--that would be really hard! Obviously, one would be nice too, but we’ll work on Baby R later (she’s only 15 months)--one at a time is enough! Well, Little Man E will be 3 next month, and so I was trying to figure out ways that we could motivate him to go potty, regularly. We already have a sticker chart, and we bought Superman, Spiderman, Nemo, Incredibles, etc stickers--for the chart, but I saw this Sesame Street DVD at Walmart, called “Elmo’s Potty Time”. The only television show my kids watch consistently is Sesame Street--and they LOVE Elmo! So I bought it--and thought that we’d give it a try. Well, we’ve watched it 3 times now, and it is such a cute show! My kids already LOVE it! And they sing along with the songs, like “You’ll do it, you’ll use the potty!!”, “Accidents happen”, etc. It may sound kind of corny, but it talks about how Elmo and the other characters, used to not use the potty, when they were babies, but now they do, and that kids can do it too. And seeing that Elmo got potty trained, made Little Man E want to use the potty too. It’s only been a week, and Little Man E has already gone number 1 and number 2, for the first time! Hurray for Sesame Street and Elmo! :) We bought him some “toilet treats” and we give him one of those every time he goes, along with a sticker for his chart. We’ve also bought pull-ups, kandoo wipes, pixxar underwear, training pants, etc. We are just glad that we are finally having a breakthrough. I think that encouragement from Mom and Dad, saying “You’re such a big boy E.” is very helpful too, he loves to feel like a big boy. YEAH! :)