Baby Legs

I am positive I'm late getting on board with Baby Legs, but I just want to say how much I love them. Last week, the day after we started potty training, my friend Trish gave us two pairs of these lovely leg warmers for babies. I had seen another friend of mine's little girl in hers when she first brought her home from Vietnam, but we never owned a pair.


For potty training in the middle of winter with COLD toilet seats, these Baby Legs have been a savior!! Sam can wear them on his legs and they protect him from getting too cold, thus relaxing him a bit to be able to potty faster. Thanks again, Trish!

I promised to type up our methods for potty training, so that is mainly what this post will be devoted to.

Here's what I started with:

• A big bag of M&Ms (put in a small container in both bathrooms)
• A potty chart
• Stickers, lots of stickers
• A converter seat with stool
• About 12 pairs of undies, washed and ready to go
• Pull-ups interactive DVD
• Pampers free potty training kit
• Other DVDs about potty training or other online videos (Elmo has an okay one)
• Big prizes for big feats

We decided to forgo the pull-ups altogether. But, both Pampers and Huggies have free giveaways that are very useful to potty training. Huggies has an interactive DVD that has coloring pages you can print out and Pampers has stickers, trophies and charts in their free giveaway.

We started talking about using the potty months ago. We borrowed a friend's Elmo Potty Training DVD and let Sam watch it a couple times, we used his stuffed Elmo doll to show how Elmo can sit on the potty and, much to Bill's chagrin, we let him watch Daddy going potty.

When it came time for the big day, I turned on our Pull-ups DVD and let Sam hear everyone talking about using the potty - big boys and girls whom he looked up to. Then I sat him on the potty for long periods of time until he tinkled a little bit. I made such a big deal about it and we started our routine:

• flush
• put undies and pants back on
• wash hands
• dry hands
• get an M&M
• put a sticker on his chart (included in the Pampers package)

After ten stickers, he got a big prize (a miniature monster truck). After the first time he had a BM, he also got a big prize (another truck) and we got to dance together with the music blaring (for him, anyway). We also made that video, since he loves to look at himself on the computer screen. If it was an especially big deal to get him on the potty (like he was crying or resisting in some way) he would get an extra sticker or a phone call to Daddy to tell him what he did.

We colored the coloring pages we printed off from the DVD too. We talked about it all day. If he had an accident, I didn't yell at him, but instead I told him it was okay but that we needed to go in the potty next time so we didn't mess up Thomas (or Diego - whoever was on his undies).

During the first three days I gave him a ton of liquids - normally I give him a cup of water with a tablespoon of juice, but on these days I gave him half water half juice, so he would drink more than usual. I also took him to the potty every 30 minutes all day. While he sat on the potty, especially during the first day, I would say, "shhh, do you hear that?" He always answered, "what Mommy?" to which I would say, "it's the sound of Sam going pee pee." And then he would look down and go pee pee. It was soon like Pavlov's dog! I could just say "do you hear that?" and he would go.

Again, I'm no expert on potty training, but I AM an expert on Sam. I know that he was ready to potty train a couple weeks ago because he was recognizing when he needed a new diaper and because he asked to use the potty a couple times. But, he wasn't doing some of the other things the "books" say he should be doing, like pulling down his own pants or staying dry during nap time.

Sam has always been a heavy wetter, at nighttime and in the daytime. I know he needs to go to the potty a lot more than other kids, so I haven't been letting him wait too long. If he tells me he needs to go now, we go - no questions asked and no matter when he tells me (like if he's in bed). But, we're still at the point now that I need to take him about once an hour, with or without his request. I never ask him if he has to go, I just tell him it's time. If I ask him, he will always say no. I also let him bring whatever toy he wants to the potty with him (especially if he's resisting because he wants to play with it).

It was pretty tough and we're obviously still working on it. By no means have we perfected it, but I believe we've done a good job. We're stilling using cloth diapers for nap time and bedtime, but they feel similar to regular undies, so if he goes in them he gets upset. I will work on nap time and bedtime after we've perfected daytime dryness.

Thanks to Caroline for her encouragement and her own blogging about it - it really gave me the push I needed. In fact, the one thing she wrote in her blog that made me realize we can do this was that she got a ton of undies for her son and they would go through all of them until he recognized what was supposed to happen. It just clicked with me after that. I had been under the false assumption that we wouldn't even begin potty training until Sam was ready to not have any accidents, or at least less than two a day. I don't know why I thought that, but I don't anymore. Caroline's son is a day younger than Sam, so that was a great encouragement as well (not to mention he has two other friends, one a boy and one a girl, who are his age who have been potty trained for months now).

Just for fun - this is what exercising with Sam is like. He's always under-foot, or on top of us in some way!