January 6th is the date the Christian church celebrates every year as Epiphany, when the wise men follow the star to find the Christ child. However, this year, epiphany occurred in the Hege household on January 5th. I am referring to the epiphany of potty training. Anna Hege has finally gotten it. Hallelujah!
If you look back, we started this process this summer in July during
Grands' Camp. Anna did great for the week in Wilmington, although Mom put a lot of effort and rearranged some plans in order to focus on potty training. Anna even did great the week we got back home. Then, she just decided she was done. I'm talking
meltdown every time she needed to go sit on the potty. So, after a couple of days of this, I decided that I wasn't going to traumatize her and we went back to diapers. She was pretty upset about not being able to wear big girl panties anymore, but we told her when she was ready to go in the potty, she could wear them again.
My mom continued to reassure me that she would not enter kindergarten in diapers and that one day she would just make up her mind and that would be the end of it. A friend in our Sunday School class is a urology resident and told me that they don't even encourage training until children are three years old because you can't be guaranteed that they are anatomically ready until then. Both of these things made me feel a little better.
Well, the three-year-old birthday came and went. And my due date kept creeping closer and closer. Although it wouldn't have been the end of the world to have two kids in diapers, I really wanted to avoid it if I could. So, as Christmas break was approaching, Will and I decided that we were doing potty training boot camp over the break and we weren't going back.
We told her that we had to save the diapers for Baby Jack and she would wear big girl panties and pull-ups--no more diapers. The first few days were pretty hard. She kept asking for diapers back. The kicker was that she would meltdown and fight me about going to the potty, but would run right in the bathroom with a smile for her daddy. I kept telling myself that this is what we needed to help her become more of a daddy's girl, since that was going to be a necessity after Jack got here. Will became potty-training instructor and I was simply the back-up assistant. It did help that it snowed the first part of the break and Will was home a little bit more than usual.
Eventually, the accidents got fewer and fewer. The resistance became less. We noticed that she had caught on to the difference between panties and pull-ups and would have way more accidents in the pull-ups. We started wearing pull-ups only at night and to preschool. As long as we prompted her, she would stay clean and dry through the day.
Then came the day of epiphany. On January 5, 2011, Anna started telling us when she had to go to the potty. She stayed clean and dry all day and we barely had to prompt her! Her teachers had told me that when she was ready, they were fine with her wearing panties to school, so the next day, she went in panties--and stayed clean and dry! She went four days before she had her first accident, and we've only had two since then. I am such a proud Mama!
Now several of my friends have warned me about doing this so close to Jack's arrival and that I need to prepare myself for a regression, and that's fine. That will only be temporary. At least I now know that she knows what she is supposed to do!
For the last couple of days, she has started going to the potty by herself without even telling us first. She'll just come flying around the corner screaming, "I pee-peed in the potty by myself!" She has a prize bag for when she tells us when she needs to go first, but she's starting to forget about that because it's just becoming what she does. Last night, she didn't want to put on her pull-ups for bedtime, so we let her leave her panties on. She did wet her bed this morning, but kept saying, "Next time I have to get right up and run to the potty". She gets it!
I'm so thankful and so relieved and so proud! It is one of the best feelings in the world! Yay Anna!
I'm so excited about my little sis becoming a mama! She has been so antsy about wanting to have all of the baby stuff ready so I was glad to be able to help her feel a little more at ease. Her girls definitely came through and were so generous. And she still has three more showers to go! Caroline is going to be all set!
