It's a Rogers Life: Big Girl Panties

I'm happy and relieved to announce that Arden is potty trained! I know you've all been waiting for this day.

I had been putting it off for so long because Huston was not the easiest child to potty train (to say the least) and the experience left me emotionally scarred and wary of repeating the whole ordeal. Potty training him (at least the pooping part) was probably one of the hardest things I've done so far as a mother. But Arden had been showing lots of signs that she was ready, so finally the Monday after spring break (March 19th), I pulled out her big girl panties and told her we were going to start going pee pee on the potty.

I took her a lot that morning and she had one accident (where she pulled the covers over her head and peed on our bed), but other than that she did really great. Over the next few days she only had one other real accident, and a few times where she peed a little bit in her panties, but then told me she had to go potty and did the rest there.

Now a few weeks into it, she is doing so great and telling me when she has to go and it has seemed mostly effortless.

Pooping, however, is something my kids struggle with, for some reason. She tries to hold her poop in (like someone else I know) and has been screaming and crying and telling me she doesn't have to poop. The first week of potty training Huston had soccer practice on Wednesday and she pooped in her panties at the park. It was a mess. She has pooped a little bit in them a few other times, but if we're home I usually notice the signs (namely, that she's grabbing her bottom and running around) and make her sit on the potty.

Unfortunately, sometimes it takes 17 times of running to the potty and making her sit on it (while she screams and cries and says she's all done and fakes me out by saying that she did it, when she really didn't) before she'll finally go. But praise the Lord, she usually does finally go and hasn't been holding it in for a week at a time like Huston did.

I'm hoping that after awhile she'll mellow out about it - she's already doing a little better than before.