Another milestone

I've said this before but Baby is such a quick learner. She makes up her mind to learn or do something...and bang, she does it. And does it well and complete.

Creative use of the potty @ 18 months

I predicted she would be toilet trained by the end of summer. And she was. I'd love to take credit and share my "training" tips but really, both S and I were so lazy about it that I actually felt guilty a few times. Baby would wake in the night and say she had to go to the bathroom and we would sleepily tell her that she had a diaper on and that it would be fine. Yikes. We had no technique and didn't really think about it all that much beforehand. However, I thought I'd share what happened and what we did (or, perhaps more importantly, didn't) do.

• We were given a potty when Baby was born and we bought another one - we had one on each floor of our home and out in the open from very early on. We didn't really talk about what they were - they were often used as toy boxes.
• We offered the potty from about 18 months but Baby didn't really show that much interested so we stopped offering. She went in the small potty a handful of times between 18 months and 2 years old.
• Someone gave us a potty training book and we read it once in a while.
• Baby discovered some Dora underwear that someone had given her in her smalls drawer not long after her 2nd birthday and desperately wanted to wear them. We explained that they were for when she wasn't wearing diapers anymore. She wore them over her diaper a few times.
• The kids at her daycare were all potty trained at the time and the care giver said Baby often went in and sat on the toilet with her diaper on.
• Baby saw the underwear again this spring and decided she was done with diapers. We started putting her consistently in underwear at home - she only had 2 "accidents."
• After a couple of weeks I mentioned to our care giver that Baby was wearing underwear at home and she said to start sending her there with underwear too! We were skeptical but did it...she's only had 1 "accident" and it was when there was an assistant and we think Baby is a bit quieter around her and likely waited too long to tell her she had to go.

So there you go. Nothing too earth shattering. It has been uneventful. We do put a pull up on her at night still but she has already asked to not wear it and she's dry 99% of the time in the morning so we'll likely get a good quality waterproof cover for her mattress and be done with it.

Wow, no more diapers! Crazy!

I think part of the ease with which it happened is Baby's personality and part of it was wanting to be like the "big kids." It's amazing the influence the day care kids have on her...even with her only going 2 days a week. That influence is a whole 'nother post!