Potty Training...For Real This Time

Dear Subway,
We apologize for that piddle puddle we left in your highchair. But we had just used the last babywipe. You should maybe rethink that non self-serve napkin policy.

If shopping with small children wasn't like a big game of hot potato before, it sure is now that the diapers have come off! Yes, without much preamble or preparation, we bought some 2T panties and said that was that. I took Selah Grace to the aisle full of toddler underwear and let her choose her favorite pack. After much oohing and aaahing over cartoon characters, a two minute stretch of clutching Buzz Lightyear ones (no gender constraints here), she VERY EXCITEDLY picked out her pack of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse undies. Her new chant is, "No more diapers! Yes panties!"

We've had a few days of loading up the washer with every pair of pants she owns. But I think we've finally discovered a reward that motivates her. Chocolate. I asked her what she would like more than anything as a reward from going on the potty chair five times and her answer was a chocolate drink! Together we made a sticker chart to put over her potty chair. She gets one sticker for her sticker chart with each use of the potty. One sticker to put on her shirt and one chocolate chip to eat immediately. After five stickers on the chart she earns herself a cup of hot chocolate. Hopefully the new chocolatey incentives will motivate her to give up the diapers. She's known how to use the potty for a while now, but just isn't interested in making the switch. No more dawdling. It's time to pay the cloth diapers forward to baby brother who has grown out of his mini cloths.

The potty in public is still kind of tricky. Public restrooms with big toilets scare her. Good instincts. They scare most of the rest of us too. Maybe we'll put a potty chair in the back of the Pilot and let her go there in the middle of shopping trips, but that leads us into a whole new conundrum...what to do if she DOES go? Bushes? Doggie bag it? The options seems slightly less than sanitary or legal for that matter.

We're trying to keep it fun and allow Selah to be a part of the process as much as possible, in what we hope is giving her buy-in to the whole situation. She chose the panties, the reward stickers, the reward chocolate.

Wish us luck! And you might want to start Lysol wiping your shopping cart if you don't already do so. We just may have been there before you with an, "oh well, next time we'll make it to the potty chair," kind of trip.