He’s 2 years and 3 months old today. Time to grow up, kid!! As much as I love my cloth diapers, mama is SO ready to have a break from diapering and doing all the laundry that comes with it. A 5+ month break would be just AWESOME, okay buddy?

The reason why I had a goal of 2 years, 3 months in mind to seriously potty train Braden is because that’s when my nephew Luke was trained, and they really seem to be developing on pretty much the same curve. Up until now I’ve been using the term “potty learning“, but now…I’m going to do my research this week, and I’m hoping by the beginning of next week we can go into hard core potty training. I am a firm believer that kids CAN be trained. Touchy subject to some, I know…but I sleep trained my baby, and look how awesome that went! I know, and it is not my intent, to push potty training on him. I do not want him to have a bad experience, make it negative in any way at all….but I want it done. I feel like I know he’s ready by things he says and the interest he does have in the potty now. He loves to sit on the potty, but as soon as his naked little bum hits the toilet seat he says “done!” He does understand and say to us “Pee on potty! Get potty treat!” but then he doesn’t actually do it!

So here’s where my week approaching of research comes in. We’ve been reading this book for months with Braden:

 It also came with a little boy doll and potty so that Braden can “teach” the doll how to use the potty and it comes with this DVD, which I will start showing to Braden this upcoming week, every day.

It sounds too good to be true, but I think with whatever method I use, if I’m just consistent and have the determination to do it, I will, and so will Braden. One of my Twitter friends saw some of my tweets about potty training and says she swears by the three day method. I will use this week to review which method, or a combination of the two???, will work best for us.

For my mommy friends who have potty trained your toddlers…here are some concerns I have, and points I wanted to make, and if you could comment with suggestions or advice, I’d greatly appreciate it!

• Braden typically doesn’t care if he is soaking wet or even if he has a poopy diaper…does this mean he’s not ready?
• He is holding his bladder longer every week, and seems to have one big huge pee a few times a day
• I leave him commando (sans diaper) in the morning for up to 2 hours and he doesn’t have an accident
• He shows great interest when me or Jay go to the potty
• Knows he gets a “potty treat” (I have a jar of M&M’s) if he goes…but doesn’t seem motivated on his own enough to pee to actually get said treat.
• When I see Braden pooping, I have asked him in the past “do you want to go poop on the potty?” he says “no”
• Has been quite upset, even seems “devastated”, when I have changed his poopy diapers lately
• He only poops every 3-4 days…will that be really hard to train?
• Do I go right into night training too? I really don’t want to just do a load of 3 cloth diapers every 3 days only for nighttime use…know what I mean? 
• We will not be using cloth “pull ups” only underwear
• What do you think of this reward system:

As far as rewards go…I have this free potty chart that I’m going to put in our bathroom, and he can put a Thomas sticker whenever he does each of these things:

I am also going to take away all of his toy trains…seriously! And make a very visual chart so that when he pees once, he will get a sticker and then get “Thomas” back. Then when he pees/poops twice, he will get to put the stickers on his chart and get “Percy” back, and so on and so forth. Mean mommy? I don’t know, in my head that as a reward system will probably work better than the M&M’s, his face lit up like a Christmas tree when my Mom gave him a bunch of new trains last weekend! So why not take them away and give them back? Plus I have brand new trains, some of the “big” ones that he will get once he’s farther along in training. I also will be telling him that he will get a train table in his room once his diaper change table is gone. I’m not 100% sure he will understand that…but it’s worth a shot. We do have a train table for him, was going to save it for Christmas, but #1 he won’t actually get to “open” it at Christmas…we’d have to set it up and leave it at home anyway, and #2 if it’s a big motivator in helping my boy get potty trained, it’s worth the early present!

I’d love to hear your encouraging stories and helpful advice, friends!