Big. Boy. Underwears.

Oh you hadn't heard yet? Will's a big boy now and he only wears big boy underwear. Or "underwears" as he calls them. We're still working our way through the occasional accident, but at this point I can confidently declare Will to be potty TRAINED.

It has been a long journey since we got Will his first potty a year ago. A few weeks after introducing the chair, we were off to a great start when he had his first potty pee. After celebrating appropriately, he settled into a good routine of sitting on the potty and reading books like his dad. But it didn't last - we weren't consistently getting him to sit on the potty, and he didn't slow down his diaper production for a long time. We started bribing him with candies (for pees) and donuts (for poops) and even got him some cool choo-choo underwear that he could wear when he was done with diapers but these motivators only got us sporadic success. This past summer, we started getting serious and tried a few more interesting techniques, which showed some success for pees but we still were having trouble with poop.

This brings us to about a month ago, when Erin adopted a plan she had read about, where we tied in several things Will has been interested in lately: race cars, stickers, and Chuck-E-Cheese. Below Will is holding his "Poops and pees for Chuck-E-Cheese" racetrack, which hung on the fridge for several weeks. There were 10 spots on it, and each time Will successfully pooped in the potty, he would get the usual donut, but also got to put a car sticker on one of the spots on the racetrack. We took these pictures when he got to put on the 10th sticker (it took much longer than we hoped it would to get to #10).

So that night we went to Chuck-E-Cheese! YEEAAAAAAAAAAAAH! He even got a high-five from Chuck himself when he told him why we were there.

Afterward, we thought about starting a new racetrack, but weren't too keen on having to keep doing this every couple weeks if he started getting better at using the potty, not to mention the number of donuts we would be feeding him. Also, we didn't want the situation where he was only going in the potty for rewards, and not for himself. So a few weekends ago, Erin and I followed a "potty training boot camp" program Erin found online. I was skeptical that it would work, but was really just along for the ride - this was Erin's plan. And it totally worked. The 3-day program started with us "throwing away" all of Will's diapers (i.e., making a big show but stashing them in the shed until Hallie has need for them), so they were no longer available as a crutch.

The next three days involved constant contact from either Erin or I or both of us, allowing him to tell us when he needed to use the potty instead of telling him when he needed to go. This did however require near-constant reminders for him to tell us when he had to go, and catching him each time he started having an accident and getting him to the potty ASAP. It took him about a day and a half before he started keeping his pants dry, and we could stop constantly running loads of laundry and scrubbing the floor. It was pretty stressful for him - we had to be patient and he was easily upset that weekend - but I am very happy with its success, and I think he's pretty proud of himself. And now he gets to wear his cool big boy underwears.