So we've been potty training this past week. I've been wanting to do this for a while, because 1) I'm super sick of changing diapers, and 2) having one child in diapers is expensive having two in diapers is painful to our budget. Seriously I can hear the budget crying as I walk up with diaper receipts in hand. I was hoping to have Britt potty trained by two, this summer he started seeming like he was ready. He would come to me and pull on the diaper asking for a new one by saying "bap-per" for diaper and with a little help he can get down and step out of his shorts. Most of all he is protesting at diaper changes trying to cover himself up and he is interested in the toliet. He has liked following us into the bathroom for months, wanting to drop the toliet paper in the toliet and flushing it.

However, I didn't start sooner because everyone advised us to wait until after the baby, because he would probably regress some when she got here. So I thought starting sometime in October would be good, because the newness of the baby should be worn off and it would give us about 2 months till the holidays, but October was a bad month for us because it involved so many test and papers, that I just didn't have the time to devote to it. So we started this past Tuesday.

We decided to try the naked baby method, since people said within a week they could be a long way to trained. Since it was cold, he wore a long sleave shirt and socks. The first day was a nightmare. I would put him on the toliet about every hour, and he would go some of the time, but not as well as he's been doing in the past. He would get off and run around and have an accident in the floor. I cleaned up 3 spots and Gary may have cleaned up another spot or two. I thought about calling it quits and putting him back in a diaper, but since I knew Kelly and Joshua had a tough first day, I decided to stick it out. Day two went better, he went on the toliet more like he had been before, and he only had two accidents both of which he managed to stop and finish in the toliet. Day three he only had one accident and went in the toliet all day. Over the weekend, we tried pull ups some when we were out of the house, and those are no help. He uses them just like a diaper, and they actually seem to keep him drier than the diapers do.

All in all it went pretty well, HOWEVER, it feels way more like Gary and I are just being trained to take him to the bathroom at certain times than him being trained to use the toliet. He is still lagging in the conversation department only using one word at a time, he seems to understand an aweful lot, but we aren't sure if he understands what we are trying to do. What do you think readers?

We are going to give it another week, and if we aren't making some sort of progress, we may just call it off and try again after New Years, because the next month and a half is going to be a crazy one. My folks are coming down to see us before Thanksgiving, then we are going to Plant City for Thanksgiving. The next weekend we will be going to Tampa for El Bethel's meeting, and then back in Gainesville for a week. Then it will be exams and Christmas break. We hope to spend a week and a half in Alabama and then a week and a half in Plant City. I don't think that much going and doing will be condusive to potty training him. Any advise out there?

I'll leave you with a video that Gary recorded of me and Britt on Saturday while he was using the bathroom. Britt doesn't mind sitting on the toliet as long as we either read his "SkippyJon Jones" books or sing songs. His favorite to ask for is Pooh by which he means "Return to the House of Pooh Corner" by Kenny Logins. He says lots of the words with me, points out his nose, and dances.