Potty Party

I have been thinking for a while about potty training Sarah Graves.  I read this book about Potty Training in Just One Day, which I think is similar to the Azrin and Fox book that came out in the 70's, I think.  I also read this blog post that I found via Pinterest from a mom of four about how she potty trains in just a day.  The book and the blog post have similar ideas, although the book method requires a lot more potty party planning. 
The basic premise for both is that you and your child spend one day together with no interruptions (no phone calls, no texts, no facebook check-ins) and you focus just on going to the potty.  The book really plays up having a party theme with decorations, activities, and presents that all surround your theme.  The idea of the party is to make the potty fun and exciting and to feed your child food and drink to encourage the need to potty.  The book heavily focuses on training your dolly complete with the doll having accidents and actually going on the potty. 
I put together a plan that I thought would work for us.  We would use baby Kate to train since SG loves her doll and take a lot of interest in that.  I would tell her about our party and that's we had junk food and juice to drink all day.  That was also why daddy wasn't at home with us.  I didn't do any elaborate decorations for our party.  I didn't really think she would notice either way.  I did wrap up her big girl panties (I will post about those later) and plan activities for us to do while she was on the potty and in between. 

These are the snacks that I put together, plus some rice krispie treats that daddy made for us.  She had Who Nu cookies, which basically taste like Oreos, but they have fiber and some other vitamins in them, Goldfish crackers, pretzels, raisins, apple juice, and fruit punch complete with a fun curly straw.  She doesn't drink much, so I felt like we needed a plan to motivate that. 

The night before our party, I brought out the potty chair and set up a basket with activities for her to do while she was on the potty.  In actuality, the iPad alone probably would have been enough, but I wasn't sure.  I also got her step stool out to encourage hand washing as a habit after she goes.

Lovie found this potty watch at Babies R Us and it has been a hit.  It has a timer for 30, 45, or 60 minutes and it plays music at whatever interval you set it to.  I wore it all day and she liked to hear the music and I am hoping that will be an ongoing reminder for when she needs to potty.

Here she is patiently trying to go. 

I was nervous the morning of and got up early to make sure we were all set.  I made Kate some panties using safety pins and a receiving blanket cut out in the shape of underwear.  To make Kate go on the potty, I had a medicine syringe filled with water tucked in the bathroom that I used to make Kate pee while SG was tearing some toilet paper for Kate.  To make Kate poop, I wore an apron with a few raisinettes tucked in the pocket that I stuffed in her underwear while SG wasn't looking.  Kate also tried to go potty a couple of times, but she couldn't.  Kate peeing and pooping made an impact on Sarah Graves.  She has even brought it up today. 

The plan was for when she has success she gets a treat (M&Ms) out of the apron pocket and she gets to call someone on the phone to tell them about her success. 

She was really excited to unwrap her present and get her big girl panties and she was very willing to go potty yesterday.  She would even sit on the potty for 15 - 20 minutes watching Elmo videos on the iPad.  Unfortunately, I don't seem to be able to get the timing down right.  I started off taking her about every 15 minutes.  Then we had a few misses, so I decided to shorten that a bit.  She did have one success and was so proud, but after that she has had nothing but misses.  We worked on it all day yesterday and stayed by ourselves until about 5:30 or 6, then I was very thankful for reinforcement to arrive.  It is hard to stay positive and enthusiastic when there is little success. 

Today we decided to try going every 5 minutes as a way to more often catch her in the window of going potty, but she is much more resistant to sitting on the potty today and we haven't had success. 

I was talking to my Maw Maw Bourgeois and she suggested that we give it a week and if it isn't working any better, we go back to diapers and try again in a few weeks.  That seems workable as at least that is a plan where we won't be cleaning up accidents forever!  I know she wil get it, it's just a matter of when.  I had really hoped that my planning and preparation would make this simple and fun for us, but it may take more time.