Potty Training

Austin is potty trained.  Pretty much.  He could have been potty trained for months now, but I just never had the urge to really push it. Sometimes diapers are just more convenient...especially when you're out by yourself a lot with 2 kids to take care of!  Getting out of line at a crowded grocery store to take your child potty is never fun...and neither is trying to contain a squirming 1 year old while trying to get your other one situated on a public toilet!  Diapers really are easier some of the time, but it got to the point where I was embarrassed that my 2.5 year old was still in diapers and decided it was finally time.

Austin now wears his undies all day and rarely has an accident.  He goes to the potty on his own, without me even asking a lot of the times.  I put him in a pull-up when we leave the house, but he still tells me when he needs to go.  I hate to admit it, but on few occasions I have just told him to go in his pull-up so that I wouldn't have to mess with public bathrooms.  Still not sure the best way to approach that whole situation...yuck!  He also wears pull-ups to bed and for his nap.  Sometimes they're wet when he wakes up, and sometimes they're dry.  

The biggest help in potty training Austin is the fact that he hates to get his clothes wet.  He despises even the smallest drop of water falling on him when he's brushing his teeth, so the feeling of tinkle trickling down his legs was the main motivator in getting him to use the potty.  However, we are having an issue with #2.

I've read the studies and psychology on boys and going poo, but I just don't get it.  Austin will put himself through extreme discomfort and hold it in for days, just so he doesn't have to go in the potty.  I push fiber and liquids and eventually we will achieve success, but it's torture sometimes getting there.  Last night it took begging and pleading on and off for almost two hours.  Today he waited until I put on his pull-up and started going, stopped to tell me, and then finished in the potty.

I'm not totally stressing yet.  I'm hoping it will get better each day and I'm trying to stay patient.  If we have to go to CVS for a new car or truck every night for the next week, we will.  Or if I have to move Austin's bookshelf into the bathroom so we'll have plenty of books to read while we're waiting it out, that will be fine.  Bottom line...he'll learn eventually.