How About a Bowl Full of Toys?

(This is a potty-training post. Those of you who don't like to read posts with the words "pee" and "poop" in them should stop reading now.)

To hear my mom tell it, potty training me was like skipping through a field of daisies. "When you were 22 months old you asked to wear pretty panties. I told you that to wear the pretty panties you had to pee in the potty, and you said 'OK'. It was so easy!"

Because I believe(d) in karma, I expected to have at least one easy-to-potty-train child.

Karma's a b*^%#.

Will, at 35 months, was a late potty trainer. He started making progress around 18 months, peeing on the potty whenever we set him on it. It took him a year and a half though, punctuated by a three-day potty training boot camp weekend, to get from that point to actually potty trained. The process, with the exception of the boot camp weekend, wasn't particularly difficult or stressful, it was just L...O...N...G.

He looks so little here!

After that experience, I assumed that Hallie would be the one for whom potty training just clicked. Ha.

Potty training Hallie has been both difficult and stressful. She can tell us when she's actively peeing and pooping, asks immediately after she's done to have her diaper changed, and can, to some extent, control her bladder. All good things, right? The flip side of the coin is that Hallie CANNOT figure out how to release her pee while sitting on the potty. She also REFUSES to sit on the potty, regardless of what we offer her.

It doesn't help that most of her underwear - size XXS,

the smallest size made - won't stay up.

This morning Hallie woke up with a dry diaper. I suggested she sit on the potty. NO. I asked her to sit on the potty. NO. I begged her to sit on the potty. NO. And then in a moment of weakness and desperation, Tom and I collectively offered her - and had every intention of following through on - the following rewards if she would just sit on the potty. (She didn't even have to pee - she just had to SIT.)

- One M&M
- Five M&Ms
- One sticker
- Five stickers
- Fruit Loops for breakfast
- Fruit Loops with M&Ms for breakfast
- A new toy
- A bowlful of new toys

After each offer she just smiled and said "no" in her little sing-song voice. She even said "no, thank you" a couple of times, and after Tom offered her a bowlful of toys she laughed and said "I awe-weddy (already) have a toy fwom McDondalds!"

In two weeks Grandma Susie and Grandpa Mike are coming to stay with the kids for a few days while Tom and I head to Iowa for a wedding. We're leaving the potty training to her.