A Welcome Surprise

I have been very eager and yet at the same time very reluctant to write the following post as I did not want to jinx anything.

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that Jadyn has been showing interest in going potty on the toilet and although the number of times she was actually going potty was very few, I did not want to discourage her interest so we broke down and bought a box of feel and learn pull ups so she could pull them off and on herself. Once she finally started going on the potty, things started to escalate in a positive direction fairly quickly as she was going on her own without a struggle quite often and before long was even keeping her pull-up dry. However, because she was still technically in a diaper she seemed perfectly satisfied to go "stinky" in her pants as opposed to the potty and that is where I made the best decision I could have possible made - I switched her to big girl underwear and let her go poopy in there a couple of times - not pleasant for anyone involved but it was worth it because I can now report that we have a fully potty trained little girl.

And despite my apprehension to keep her in underwear for all the driving around we do, I stuck to it in order to avoid confusion and to my surprise she has had little to no accidents while we are out and about including our 3 weekly trips to take Jake to school in the neighboring city and several trips to "civilization" including a 2 1/2 hour drive to the aforementioned birthday party. Of course, we have to travel with her little potty and pull over several times but at least she is telling us when she has to go. And she does not seem to have any fears of going in public places either so I feel very, very fortunate on all fronts of the potty training. I also have to say that after all the battles we went through with Jake resulting in his not being potty trained until 3 1/2, I feel we kind of deserved a break with Jadyn so to the powers that be - I thank thee.

We are now almost diaper free with Jadyn only wearing a pull-up to bed at night and even that I could see changing rapidly as there has been many a day that she wakes up dry. It is hard for me to fathom not having any diapers in the house and no longer having to change them. Yesterday, I removed the changing pad and diaper changing station attached to her dresser combo and replaced them with a cute display of all her Care Bears. It felt like such a huge milestone. My little girl is growing up so quickly!