We started potty training Joshua last year during Thanksgiving weekend.  It hasn’t been the smoothest road to go down.  He understood the need to use the potty pretty quickly, but accidents still happen in certain circumstances.

For the past 4 months, we haven’t put a single diaper or pull-up on Joshua, but we washed a LOT of laundry.  We can generally expect an accident when Joshua is upset and crying, or when he gets too caught up in playing, or when he’s really tired and couldn’t think straight (late at night or first thing in the morning).  Cliff also wakes him up and put him on the potty every night around 11 pm (and we refer to that as the “dream pee”).

It was a lot of work.  And I’ll admit it, some days I think it would have been easier to just slap a diaper on that kid, even though it was mostly Cliff dealing with all the extra work like changing bed sheets and wiping up accidents.  I felt like we’re forever in training mode and this will never end.  I was *this* close to putting pull-ups on him at night, but Cliff thought we should keep trying to train him without pull-ups.

This past week, however, we caught a HUGE break!  One morning I heard some rustling in the bathroom.  I jumped up and went to check on Joshua.  He was standing there in the bathroom and looked up at me when he saw me.  I said, “Hey buddy, do you want to pee in the potty?”  He said, “Mommy, I already peed.”

I was thinking, oh f*@#$@ crap, another accident!  I went searching for the puddle in his room.  First pee in the morning is tough for Joshua.  He often pees as soon as he wakes up, and that is generally in his bed.

But I didn’t find a puddle anywhere.

I went back and looked in the bathroom…wait a minute, there’s pee in his froggy potty!  He actually managed to take off his pj pants and underwear, pee in the potty, and put his pj pants and underwear back on all by himself!  I can barely believe my eyes.  Cliff woke up and I told him what had happened, and he couldn’t believe it either.  We’ve always taught Joshua to come get us if he wants to use the potty so we can help him.  It never occurred to me that he can do everything himself.

We chalked this up to a nice one-off experience.  But no, this new practice continued.  For the rest of the week, Joshua would get up in the morning, and go use the potty by himself.  Some days he gets his underwear and pants back on, and some days he doesn’t and we find him half naked playing with his toys.  He also stopped having accidents altogether.  Everyday we waited for an accident when he cried, or when he was too excited, or when he is too tired…but the accident never came.  Now a week later, we haven’t had to change his sheets or wipe up any accidents.  It’s like all of a sudden my little boy grew up.

Now when he uses the potty, he insists on taking off his pants/underwear himself, sits on the potty himself, and says to me, “Mommy, I need some privacy.”  I leave, and come back to check on him in a minute or two.  Sometimes I help him put his underwear and pants back on, depending on if he feels like help is required.

I am so excited that we’re not dealing with accidents constantly anymore.  But it is also bittersweet that my little boy is so grown up.

Here is an irrelevant picture below.  He was sitting on Cliff’s shoulder and I thought the crack was really cute.  It goes with the potty-related post.  Sort of, right?

One day he is going to hate me for posting this.