Potty Training

I so thought it would be easier the second time around.

Wrong.  Now I am the mother of 4, not 2. 

I am a fan of potty training early.  It's wonderful if you can ditch diapers as soon as possible.  With Lucy and Elsa we started the process at 2 and frankly, with my potty party and the time that I could devote just to them, it wasn't that hard.  However, when Leta and Annie turned 2, they were no where near ready.  Sure, maybe if they were singletons and not #3 and #4, I could have done it, but with twins, they needed to be able to help with some of the process.  They weren't talking much, nor could they dress themselves.  I would have been the only one potty trained.  The facts are that Leta and Annie are a few months developmentally behind where Lucy and Elsa were at the same age.  (And, well, sometimes diapers are just plain easier.)

So, I decided to take the long patient way.  And it seemed to be working.  Annie was doing excellent keeping her diapers dry and telling me when she needed to go on the potty.  And it was all mostly her doing the work.  Sweet.

Then we hit a wall.  Well, we fell off the wall.    

Leta at this point would refuse anything to do with the toilet.  So, I decided one day last week that I was tired of paying for diapers and we were going cold turkey.  Leta and Annie donned a pair of unds the whole day.  Leta cried for the loss of her diapers, but she did excellent.  Annie, however, decided for some reason to have nothing to do with the potty anymore.  Maybe she was a tad jealous of Leta taking her potty.  I don't know, but there were screams if I tried to have her sit on the pot.  

Needless to say, the next days we had stuff going on, so back to the diapers it was and no one was telling me when they had to go, not even my once reliable Annie.  

After a few days of just chilling out about the matter we are at this point:

- Annie will often cry POTTY at inconvenient times like church, the store, bedtime but will often refuse to sit on the potty once we get there.

- Annie is at about 65% of where she used to be in the potty process before Leta started having success.

- Leta, who used to go poop one time a day has figured out the system and now goes poop about 5 times a day so that she gets 5 suckers, not 1.  I'm raising a genius.  

- Leta's favorite color is black and her favorite potty treat is "black sucker."  We don't have black suckers.

We will get there eventually, I just need to block out a week where I don't do anything else.  (And if anyone is reading this and thinking to themselves all the ways that they could potty train their hypothetical twins better, they are more than welcome to come give it a try on mine.)

Funny things about potty training:  

- The play by play I get when they are on the potty and how descriptive they can be.  

- The comedy of nekkid buns.

- The fact that when I go to the bathroom, I have 2 two year olds exclaim, "Mommy gets a treat!"

I'll take it.  

(Trying to take a picture of Ryan and Elsa's first one on one date and we have a streaker.)  

________

As I look at my little twins, it's weird thinking that at this point with Lucy and Elsa, I was close to 3 months pregnant.  Holy cow!  I loved going back tonight and reading this post and this post.  Such fun times.  It makes me realize again, that sometimes we go through hard things.  Sometimes we witness other people go through hard times, but we need to bask in the joy when we have it. 

This picture gets it.