Weekend update

With Potty-Training Weekend already halfway over, we thought we’d give you a glimpse of how things are going.

Lucy has been doing great. She woke up very excited about our weekend together and eager to learn. Even before the blinds were open, when Papa asked her what was going on today, she exclaimed, “Potty training weekend!” She has had a number of successful potty-sits, so we are counting our blessings — it seems clear that she “gets it.” Of course, there have been a few accidents, too, but that’s to be expected.

Here are some highlights from the day:

* “Potty Patty”:http://www.pottypatty.com/ is harder and weirder to use than we had hoped. (Thanks for the heads-up, Katrina!) It’s not so easy to get her to pee on demand, and her bottle isn’t easy to use, either. Jon wonders if some kids learn to pee on the potty only when someone squeezes their left thigh, since that is what it takes for Patty.

* Lucy spent most of the day in dresses with no underpants or diaper, and that has helped a lot. First of all, we can see when she is peeing. Second of all, it is easy for her to get over to the potty (which we brought outside with us for out mostly-outdoors day). She successfully pooped in the potty once (well, at least she pooped *near* it) and peed in it several times. Good job, Lucy!

* We are giving out lots of gold stars: one for having dry pants, one for a potty attempt, and one for something left in the potty. That means three gold stars are possible for each potty-sit! Lucy has figured out that she can sit on the potty and get a gold star, so she has been working the system a bit. But frankly, sitting on the potty more is not something we want to discourage, so we’ll give out as many gold stars as possible! (It’s not as if there’s a real market value for them, anyhow.)

* Lucy enjoyed lots of fun activities today: spending all day outside in the backyard, watering some plants, drinking a juice box, playing guitar with Mama. We took a family walk in the afternoon to McDonald’s for french fries, and Lucy even got to travel in the stroller with her very own giraffe umbrella, which she enjoyed _way_ more than it appears in this six-second video:

* Jon and I are astounded at how tense we felt all day. We kept trying to take deep breaths and relax, but it was pretty hard to let our guard down. It’s not that we were worried about Lucy making a mess (we were outside, after all), but we didn’t want to miss an opportunity to help her get to the potty. Also, we aren’t used to needing to supervise Lucy so closely all day long — it made the juggling of household tasks and caring for Rosie a bit challenging.
* The date night we had scheduled for tonight was a life-saver — just what we needed to help us wind down and get some perspective. We enjoyed a lovely dinner at “Francesca’s”:http://www.miafrancesca.com/ and left feeling much more relaxed.

What was Rosie doing all this time? Mostly just chillin’, though we’re aware that we paid much less attention to her than normal, for obvious reasons. She doesn’t seem to have minded much, though.

p{color:gray}. Photo: “Don’t bother me: _I’m_ not getting potty trained!”

Jon has breakfast with a dear friend of ours scheduled for tomorrow morning, so Mama is getting ready to brave a few hours on her own with the two girls — one with no pants on!