Earlier this week, my twenty-month-old went pee-pee on the potty for the first time.
I think it surprised me almost as much as it surprised her. She had been showing an interest in her brother’s bathroom endeavors for a couple weeks and has definitely done the hiding-in-closet-while-pooping move for at least a month, so I knew she was on her way to being ready.
With my son I wasn’t as aware of the readiness signs, but with this child, I’ve started letting her go to the little plastic potty to “try” whenever I changed her diaper even though she’s only 20 months. Usually it’s a lot of fake grunting, some proud smiling and a perfectly dry potty. But this particular day, she sat down and went pee-pee like a champ and we looked at each other with matching looks of astonishment on our faces. We did the requisite high-fiving, doing the potty-dance, celebrating with daddy and giving lots of compliments to entice her to do it again, but that, it seems, was the first and last time for now that she’ll use anything but a diaper to catch her pee.
A friend of mine and mom of three who also babysits other children in her home, swears by a particular potty-training regimen that I’m beginning to think might have some merit. In her experience, toddlers, especially girls, need to start talking about the potty, trying to go on the potty, using training pants, etc., at about 20 months of age. Then, the minute they turn two, you start full-on potty training and you’ll have no diapers within about a week. There is a limited window, her theory goes, and if you miss it, the child may be in diapers for another 9 months or even a year.
Some say that cloth diapers make it easier to potty train because they are more aware of a wet diaper than their disposable-clad counterparts. Whether that’s the case with my daughter or not, I think I may subscribe to my friend’s method for potty training. She’s at the right age to try it, so come December and her second birthday, we may be saying goodbye to diapers forever.
Beyond making me proud, the thought of gone diaper-less also made me a little sad. Sad that my baby, possibly my last baby, might be almost done with her cute cloth diapers – and that I might be done with my cute cloth diapers – forever. It’s an odd feeling. On one hand, its complete excitement to be done with diapers but on the other hand, I’m already a little nostalgic for that pile of warm, clean diapers in the basket or a rack of sunning dipes in the backyard (not so much for flicking poop into the toilet or putting dirty dipes into the washer!).
What is your plan for potty training? Has your child already shown signs of potty training readiness? What has worked/not worked for you?
Sarah is a mom of two and blogs about her adventures in motherhood, cloth diapering and everything in between. Catch her “Cloth Diapering Unwrapped” series on the FuzziBunz blog every week.
Tags: Cloth Diapering Unwrapped, cloth diapers, potty training
