Payoff

It seems to have happened. I'm impressed it felt as easy as it did in the end. That's right, Little Dog is potty trained. And naturally, by saying this here, he's going to regress completely.

He actually started potty training pretty young, got almost all the way done then gave up. One day he was regularly peeing and pooping on the potty, and the next he had no interest in even having his diapers changed. Flipped like a switch. It was crazy. And frustrating. Ok, not so much crazy as frustrating.

So we've been trying to draw him back into the process, and he has had weeks where he's interested, followed by weeks when he isn't. We tried bribes, peer pressure and begging. Nothing worked. And then it did. After reading about the lovely and talented geekymummy's success with a big jar of candy, I changed my strategy. Instead of the chocolate only bribes I'd been using, I got Swedish fish and gummy worms. The boys both love them, and I let Big Dog reward his potty success too even though he's been potty trained for quite a while now.

Turns out this magic combination resparked Little Dog's interest and in less than a week, he's been dry and clean all day for many days in a row. Well, we had a few days of sugar hyped up kids to cope with, but apart form that, it was a breeze. He's even waking up dry! Last night as Mr. Dog tried to swap underpants for an overnight pull up at bedtime, Little Dog balked "But I don't need it!" he said, and when he woke up dry this morning we may actually have to agree.

Once he set his mind to it, it was so easy. Really, almost no accidents at all. And like that *snap* I'm the mom of two potty trained boys.

One tiny update, just because I like to brag. Mr. Dog was woken up at 3 am last night by our little man to tell him he needed to go potty. Apparently in the process of putting the wild boys to bed, his underpants never got replaced with a pull up. The amazing thing is that Little Dog was aware enough to know this and woke up, got a parent, used used the potty and then went right back to bed. Holy crap this kid is good!