How to Potty Train in 1 Day!

A Foolproof Guide to Potty Training:

1. Tell your child he can no longer wear diapers and he has to use a potty.

2. Take off his diaper.

3. Make him use the potty.

Done! See, that wasn't so hard!

No, but really, that was our experience with potty training James. "Wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles!"

We had the gimmicks like Thomas the Train stickers to put on a chart and mini gummy worms he affectionately named "Potty Worms" (which sounds hilariously, and disgustingly, like some kind of a gross bacteria passed around in toddler daycare bathrooms). But those things didn't matter to him. Right after we took off his diaper the morning we first began our adventure in potty training, he figured it out. He had a grand total of two major accidents that first week and those were when he was with Brenden so I don't think it was James' fault. Just kidding, sweetheart.   

This was a huge relief to me as this had been something I'd been putting off for a long, long time. The idea of giving my stubborn, mischievous child full responsibility of when and where he was going to potty terrified me. I could just picture James in my mind, running around with no pants spraying my floors and walls with urine like an overexcited graffiti artist who had no idea how spray paint worked. But he didn't do that! Well, he hasn't done that. We still have plenty of years with him for this nightmare scenario to play itself out. 

No, instead my sweet, bright boy always tells me when he needs to potty. It doesn't matter where we are. James is surprisingly aware and in control of his bodily functions. If he needs to hold it when we are driving home, he will. If we are at a restaurant or church, he'll let us know he needs to go and wait until we get him to a toilet. In the first week of potty training, he'd wake up in the middle of the night to go pee, barely awake enough to sit upright on his potty but he did it! We often tell him he is a "potty pro".

James is fascinated by his poop and pee and gas. The first time he pooped, he looked into the potty and said, "It looks like beans. Are beans poop?" He calls particularly strong streams of urine "pee pee waterfalls." We've labeled gas as "fluffs" in our house to give them a softer sounding name to somehow counteract their not-so-soft smell and of course, he finds them hilarious, because well, he is our child. And gas is hilarious. He'll sometimes look behind him after he "fluffs" to try to see it. 

I wish I could actually give some concrete advice on how to potty train but my kid did it on his own. And I'm honestly not trying to brag! Because my kid isn't perfect. It was a miracle to me. This was something I had been stressing about for a very long time. I thought I'd have to homeschool because my kid wouldn't be potty trained. I thought I'd have to get a job to simply cover the cost of a lifetime of diapers. I thought, well, I thought about a lot. And all of those things I thought about were rooted in the fact that my child had not yet been potty trained. I think Heavenly Father recognized that James can be preeeeeetty crazy sometimes so He gave me a freebie on this parenting task. A tender mercy, if you will. 

My self-potty-training child is my tender mercy from heaven.

Those are my Sunday thoughts for the day.

You're welcome.