All Aboard the Potty Train!

We bought Tucker a potty seat a couple of months ago just to get him familiar with it and to see what happens. Of course, our biggest wish is that he's completely potty trained before baby gets here, but...let's not get our hopes up.

At first, the potty seat was a silly toy. Tucker would take it apart and throw the two pieces around. One time he took the little bowl out, stepped inside the seat and fell right on his face. Not a good beginning to potty training.

The potty seat moved from the living room to our master bathroom to eventually the bathtub in the master bathroom. It has since been resurrected and is back in the spotlight - well somewhat.

We sat it on the floor and told Tucker to sit on his potty seat - in a very excited and over the top voice. After all, sitting on a potty seat is the COOLEST THING IN THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD! WOOHOO!

Tucker walked up to the potty seat, turned around, hunkered down in a bear crawl position then backed up and lowered himself until he was sitting on the seat. Ok. That's one way of doing it. And this wasn't an isolated event. This is his preferred style of sitting on a potty seat. Whatever works for him - as long as he sits on it by himself!

Again - total excitement on our end. YEA! WAY TO SIT ON THE POTTY SEAT! GOOD JOB BUDDY! WOOHOO!

Now it was time for the big test - sitting him on the potty seat with no diaper on. Would he sit until something happened? Would something happen? The excitement was almost unbearable.

So it was bath time. While I ran Tucker's bath, I stripped him down and sat him on the potty seat. Have I mentioned how much he LOVES baths?!?! Needless to say, he would not stay on the potty seat and ran to the side of the bathtub where he managed to pee all over the side of the tub and my feet. yea. way to go. good job buddy. wah wah.

So the next time, we decided to move the potty seat out of the bathroom and into Tucker's room. Alec ran the bathwater and I helped Tucker get undressed in his room. Alec shut the door to the bathroom - pretty sneaky! There's no way that baby knows a nice bubbly warm bath is waiting for him! But alas, our 17-month old is much smarter than his Mama and Daddy. He wouldn't stay on the potty seat and screamed and ran buck naked out of the room to the bathroom door. But at least he didn't make a mess on the outside of the bathtub or my feet!

I've also added a couple of potty training books to our bedtime stories. One has a button you push and it makes the sound of the toilet flushing. Tucker's little finger isn't strong enough to push the button (though he has almost poked my eye out several times) so he moves my thumb over the button and while I'm reading, we flush the toilet about 20 times.

He also knows where to go when we ask if he needs his diaper changed and he knows what a diaper is. So I guess that's some sort of progress.

I know this takes a lot of patience...I just hope I have enough left when new baby gets here in 11 weeks!