I realized I hadn’t really had a good post to close out the potty training.

Evie is just the super most awesome in the world. She is doing so great. We had our rough patches, but we pushed through them. We still have some power struggles now and again, especially if we try to force her to go, but if we just leave her alone about it, she takes care of everything.

She hardly has any accidents, maybe one a week at most. She doesn’t wear a diaper during her nap and her overnight diaper is dry most nights. She has been going poo poo in the potty for weeks now. We discovered the magic formula for that was to put her on the potty, tell her to hold on tight, run and find Nala, toss her in the bathroom, go out and shut the door. Usually she was going before the door was even closed. The privacy part is very important, even though I am always a little nervous about leaving her perched precariously on the edge of the toilet.

She also knows that going poo poo means she gets to pick out a prize from the prize bucket, which is mostly stickers and toys from cereal boxes. Believe me, it doesn’t take much, one of her favorite prizes was a thing of travel size Kleenexes. Another good reward is singing the “potty song” which is a nice little conga that goes, “Pee pee in the potty! We listened to our body!” Sara is quite proud of the second line. 🙂

Evie has always enjoyed going out of the house more than in the house, so taking her to new places isn’t really a problem. In fact, the problem was that she enjoyed strange potties a little too much and would insist on going over and over again at every stop. I think the thing that fixed that was only allowing her to wash her hands if she actually went potty. She thinks that washing her hands is pretty exciting, and she especially likes to see what color soap a particular place has. I wouldn’t be surprised if she has every bathroom in the city memorized and categorized by soap color. Using this as a “reward” seems to have calmed it down to 1 or 2 trips instead of 4 or 5.

Evie is something of a clothes horse, so it should have come as no surprise when she started wanting to change her underwear about 10 times a day. It can be pretty frustrating, but we quickly learned to let her change whenever she wanted or else she would pee in them just so she could change them. This has been lessening lately though, and she has some days where she stays in the same pair all day.

She has even started going by herself now, I mean completely by herself, up until the part when she calls you in to show off her handy work. So I think we can say she is officially potty trained! Well, I would have said it a while ago, but it’s not official until it is on the blog.

In summary, hard work, persistence and out smarting your enemy, those are the keys to potty training!