Where a Kid Can be a Kid!

Potty training.  It's the phrase that strikes fear into boy moms (and maybe girl moms) everywhere. I seriously HATE potty training my boy.  Madeline was SO easy.  She was trained, night and day, in like one day.  Seriously.  I KNEW I was in for it with Duncan.  There was no way it would be that easy, no way.  I was right.  We have been working with him since he turned 2.  He was not having any of it.  He would arch his back and make it impossible to put him on the potty.  We gave it a rest for a while.  The plan (God laughed) was to take a week during Christmas break last year and train him.  The Flu.  Yep we all got that nasty flu that went around last winter the very week we had open for training.

You see when you are homeschooling older kids they have activities during the day that you need to bring them to.  We literally had one week open last winter that we could hang out around the house. Literally, one week.  The flu struck that very week.  Ok, we said I guess we'll try again in May when the activities have finished for the year. 

Along comes May.  We wanted so badly for Duncan to be trained before our trip out to California at the end of June (God laughed AGAIN).  Enter The Bribes.  Yep we bribed him.  We started with small things like an M&M.  Didn't work.  We then brought out the small Tranformers.  They worked a little.  Then we moved to bigger Transformers.  Ah finally he was PEE trained.  Yes we had to break this into 2 steps, #1 and #2 (haha).    This brought us to about June I think.  He still refused, REFUSED, to poop in the potty.

Big guns came out.  I NEVER wanted to go to this place, NEVER EVER.  Mickey Mouse is my kind of mouse.  Chuck E. Cheese is NOT.  When I think of that place I shudder.  Ewwwwwww is all I could think.  But, I did it.  I told my son that if he pooped in the potty 10 times I would take him and his sister.

Day 1 he somehow managed to poop 3 different times in the potty.  Uh oh, I thought, I should have made it 20 or more times.  Then he didn't poop in the potty for 2 MONTHS.  Yep he pooped on the floor, in his underwear and even down the stairs.  It was not pretty.

About 4 weeks ago the light bulb went off over my head.  Duncan had been locking himself in his room for about a month to do his business.  What if we were to put his potty in his room?  Success!  He could now run in there and do his business in private.

Within about 7 days he earned his trip to Chuck E. Cheese.  I took the kids there this week.  And you know what?  It wasn't bad. It was dare I say FUN?!  Of course all of the kids were in school so we practically had the place to ourselves.  I'm sure that helped.  I may even take them back some time.*

The kids won about 200 tickets and were able to get a couple of $.05 prizes each.  As you can see in the pictures I was not exaggerating when I said it was empty.  Duncan still has some work to go before I consider him totally trained but we're finally getting there.**

*if school is in session and it's a nice day outside

** The day after our Chuck E. Cheese trip Duncan decided to pee in the potty.  After peeing he went to his drawer got a pair of underwear, put them on, and proceeded to poop in them.  Seriously.