Potty Trained!!

I started potty training this cute girl in May.

We tried to do the three day potty training thing. I fed her lots of salty snacks and drinks. I set the timer and took her to the potty every 30 minutes. It was a lot and we were both sick of it by the end of the three days, but she had made some progress and had gone both poop and pee on the potty. She rarely had accidents, but she would just hold it until I put the diaper on. She spent hours just sitting on the potty watching Dora (we told her the only way she could watch Dora was if she was sitting on the potty).
Once she wore panties for a while she began to remove her diaper when we would try to put it on her. One time I had put her down for a nap and she was crying (which is normal these days, she says she likes to be awake. She doesn't like to go to sleep, she gets that from me). Anyway, finally after about half an hour I decided to go back in there and calm her down. I came in the room and there was poop all over the floor and she was standing in it. It was horrible. My days of having a dog were relived! Anyway, that is the only poop accident she has ever had (knock on wood), so it hasn't been so bad. From then on, we just had panties on her all the time except naps and night time and tried to remind her when to go potty. She had lots of pee accidents, but she got better and better at remembering and realizing when she needed to go. We also put a goldfish in the potty and told her it really wanted to swim, so it needed her pee pee to make it swim. This was awesome, as she really loves fishies!!

(We decided to spare you a picture of the poop in the potty!)

There were two things that helped speed it along. First of all, we started out with marshmallows as treats every time she even tried. Then we moved on to getting popsicles and the tiny reeses peanut butter cups when she went (she called them yellow chocolate muffins). Also, she has been wanting a backpack for months now and I had been telling her that maybe if she was really good then Santa would bring her one at Christmas. I decided to make her a little chart one day and I told her when she filled the chart up with stickers and when she was all finished wearing diapers and only wore panties then she would get a backpack. This was a huge success! Who knew getting a sticker for her hand and one for her chart would be so motivating?

Also, when friends or cousins were over, everyone got a treat for her going on the potty, so that added some positive peer pressure! She was so proud of herself when she got to hand out treats to everyone and she loved picking which sticker to put on her chart and she really really wanted that backpack, so she would try extra hard. Also, the Dora panties were helpful, because I told her Dora hated to get wet and she really wanted Cheyenne to keep her dry. I am so excited to report that Cheyenne is about 90% potty trained!! She hasn't had an accident in at least a week. She always wears panties when we go out and has gone to the bathroom several times in public restrooms even without the dora seat. She was doing great for about a week at naps and night without a diaper, but she has had several wetting the bed incidents so we decided to go back to diapers at night for a while... we probably just need to do better at not giving her anything to drink late at night. So, once she gets the night time thing down she will be 100%! YAY Cheyenne!! Here she is with her Dora backpack!! She LOVES it. She keeps asking if she can take it to her cousins' Audrey and Austin's house to play.