potty training...

Since I never blogged about the potty training progress, let me just do that quickly right now...

I haven't changed a dirty diaper in over a week.

That is serious news!! Wet diapers, yes, but dirty diapers? Not in over a week! Here's sort of how it went:

One day a week or two ago Eliana was being especially pesky when it came to getting dressed in the morning. I finally got frustrated with her running away every time I tried to put a pull up on her that I said, "If you don't want to wear a pull-up, Eliana, that's fine. But if you pee on my carpet, you're cleaning it up." I left it at that, fully expecting her to pee on the carpet, have to clean it up, (because, yes, I would have made her clean it up. At least to the best of her ability, with some good work put in) and learn her lesson. Instead, do you know what happened to my little bare-bottomed girl? After a while she stopped playing, looked at me, said, "I need to go peepee!" and ran into the bathroom to pee on her little potty. She continued the pattern most of the morning, without accident! Around noon we had this little conversation:

"Mommy, I need a pull-up."
"Do you need to go potty, Eliana?"
"No, I just need a pull-up."
"Do you need to go poopoo in the potty?"
"Nope!" (and she ran off to retrieve a pull-up, which I then helped her put on.)

After 2 minutes, if that, she says,
"Mommy, I need a diaper change."
"Eliana, did you go poopoo in your pull-up?"
and she ran away shreiking, "Don't check! Don't check!"

Yes, that was day one of our potty training, quite by accident. In that day I learned that she knew EXACTLY when she needed to go and was quite capable of going by herself, if she didn't have any restrictive clothing in her way.

As a side note, she poo'ed in the potty that afternoon, and not in a pull-up. It was a grand day indeed!

So for the rest of the week Eliana got to run around rather "free" from the waist down. Then we learned that she was just fine if she wore a dress with nothing underneath, so we moved to that so we could have our living room windows open again without flashing the neighbors with a 2 year old tush!

This week we have learned that if Eliana wears pants (with nothing underneath) she does just fine then, too. We have graduated to pants!! It is a very exciting thing for this mama. I'm hoping one of these days we can graduate to panties, but so far she has just treated them like a pull-up, which is less than stellar. BUT we are making progress! It all seems connected to her independence. She does NOT like it when we ask her if she needs to go potty. Nor does she like it if we try to help her when she has not asked for help. Only once has she missed the potty by sitting too close to the edge, and we have had NO accidents at all the entire time. Obviously, when she's at someone else's house or we're out running errands, she has a pull-up on. Which she uses like a diaper sometimes. *sigh* But she has on several occasions asked to go in the potty while we're out running errands, so I've been very proud of her for that!

Like I said, she's been making progress in the potty training arena over the last couple weeks. It is very exciting and I can't even tell you how many phone calls I've made to my parents to celebrate random potty victories. It's great.