Potty Update

Well shoot. I guess it's been a busy few weeks. Sorry for the dry spell, folks.

We have some exciting potty news from December - Lucas finally decided he was ready to use the potty, and we gave away the changing table! This is how their giant closet looks without the table now:

We kept the diaper pail since they're still wearing diapers at night.

I felt pretty nostalgic about giving up the table - it was a core part of their nursery, and our lives, for so long. So I took a few final pictures of them on the table and compared them to the newborn days:


Zoey

Abby

Luke-man

 We really needed to remove the table, since they mainly used it for climbing.

As for potty successes, here are our stats:
Zoey = 100% now - wears underwear 24/7 and accidents are very rare
Abby = 80% - still wears a diaper at night, still poops in her undies sometimes
Lucas = 75% - still wears a diaper at night, still poops in undies sometimes, still has some pee accidents

Once Lucas expressed a renewed interest, we discovered his currency - teddy grahams and mini 'nilla wafers. I guess we hadn't really given them to the kids much, so they were a pretty novel treat. Lucas was much more motivated by food treats vs. the stickers that the girls got when they learned to use the potty. A funny side effect of this is now the girls expect cookies when they go potty, even though they were already doing a great job before Lucas started getting the treats. There are plenty of times when they don't want to stop what they're doing to use the potty, but we've found that setting a timer, and reminding them about the cookies, usually helps. We feel reasonably confident about taking them out in public wearing underwear (pull-ups are too expensive, and kind of confusing for them). We're doing a lot more laundry (feels like the newborn days!) due to the accidents but we're hoping that gets better over time. They look absolutely adorable in their tiny little undies!

Potty Training

I thought it might be helpful for other parents of multiples to see how we are trying to potty train, and I want to record all the funny moments so I don't forget them. I call this the "prep for 6-8 months, then really focus on it for 1-2 months" method. I have a copy of the "3 Day Potty Training" method, and while I think many of the principles are good, it is far too exhausting to try to do a potty boot camp for 3 toddlers at the same time, especially when they're at different levels of readiness. So here's what we've done so far:

Prep:
When the kids were around 18 months old, we had a visit from old friends who had a 2.5 year old son who was in the midst of potty training. They brought their little Fisher Price frog potty with them, and our kids were fascinated by it. So after that visit, I ordered 3 potties (2 pink, 1 green, of course) and just left them out. We also got the Baby Signs "All Aboard the Potty Train" set, which included a DVD, a train whistle (just one, of course), a book, and stickers. And the Elmo's Potty Time DVD. And lots of books about going potty.


For 6-8 months, we just let them have casual exposure to the concept of using the potty - books, DVDs, watching mom and dad, sitting on the potty before bath, etc. No pressure, no expectations. Lots of praise if they happened to pee in the potty.

Focus:
Sometime in June (around 26 months), we got out the underwear and let the kids start deciding whether they wanted to wear diapers or undies each day. We made a sticker sheet for each of them and told them they could get stickers every time they used the potty. At first they were enthusiastic, but not terribly successful. There were a lot of puddles on the floor, a lot of laundry, and a lot of "uh oh, I peed!" We tried to put them on the potty at regular intervals, but corralling all 3 to sit at the same time was not always easy. It seemed like whenever we were taking care of 1 kid, someone else was peeing on the floor in another room. And they got pretty annoyed with being forced to sit on the potty at specific times. So we went more with the philosophy of reminding them but not forcing them, looking for cues that they were about to go, and running them to the potty if we caught them peeing in undies.

Sitting on the potty in front of the TV at least encouraged them to sit for longer than 3 seconds

Supplies:
Potties - 3 Fisher Price frogs (later added one more from my parents' house), 2 others given to us by friends; recently bought 3 IKEA potties - they are smaller, all one piece, and great for the car or small bathrooms. Probably not good for bigger kids though. We keep a couple potties in the living room, a couple in each bathroom, one outside by the back door, one in their bedroom, and one in the car. So I guess we have 9 total??? Better to have too many than too few, and best to have them nearby in case of emergency.

Potty rings - Sesame Street, of course. We have a soft padded one upstairs and one downstairs, as well as a folding travel one for when we're out and about. The folding one doesn't feel as sturdy and the kids need some help bracing themselves, but it really helps for public potties that are too big for them to sit on.

Stepstools - essential. We have tall ones from IKEA so they can get on and off the potties without help, and rest their feet on the stools while sitting. We have a little one that came with the potty rings and it is pointless because it's so short. Our tiny hall bathroom upstairs has 3 stools - one in front of the potty, one next to the potty so they can flush, and one in front of the sink. I trip over the darn things all the time.

Underwear - a lot. We have regular undies (size 2T/3T) and padded training pants, as well as plastic underwear covers. The majority of it was given to us in the hand-me-down clothes boxes. Sort of an icky concept to reuse underwear, but it was all clean, and this mom of triplets does not turn down freebies! I did buy one new package of underwear for the girls as an incentive - Zoey wanted purple undies, of course. Do you know how hard it is to find toddler underwear in solid colors, without any princesses on them?? I just got new sets of Sesame Street and Thomas the Train underwear for Lucas (man, those licensed characters are expensive!), and he was quite excited about them, but it has not helped to improve his success rate.

Stickers - a lot. Variety is important - Sesame Street, Thomas the Train, smiley faces, stars, etc.

Sticker charts - I found some simple ones online and printed one for each kid. At first the plan was for them to get 1 sticker for pee and 2 for poop. Then it evolved into "here kid, just take the sheet of stickers and take as many as you want while I'm dealing with cleaning up someone else's accident". For awhile just the reward of stickers was enough to keep them happy. Now they don't really seem to care about them too much - they like the verbal praise better. I briefly tried food rewards but that just turned into a whine-fest and them not understanding why they could only have a treat if they went on the potty. Not worth the hassle. I'd rather help them develop the internal motivation and pride with stickers and praise.

Clean-up - lots of cheap white washcloths and a spray bottle of vinegar for accidents on the floor. I think my floors are cleaner now than ever since we're doing so much spot cleaning. Lots of oxiclean for laundry. Soak dirty clothes in a bucket of warm water and oxiclean until the next load of laundry.

Prevention - we already have blankets on our couch because we don't want it to get messed up. So I got waterproof mattress pads and put them under the blankets, and when the kids wear undies they have to sit on a towel on top of the blankets. So there are at least 3 thick layers between the undies and the couch. For the car, I got puppy training pads to put on their carseats. For longer road trips we use pull ups or the plastic pants over undies.We also removed some of the non-washable area rugs and throw pillows for awhile.

Patience and a sense of humor - essential.

Progress - 27/28 months:
During the first week of July we went on vacation. We really didn't try to work on potty training at all, but the kids saw several cousins who were working on it. I think this really helped them, because the week after we got back from the trip they seemed much more ready to try. The girls especially made a lot of progress during the middle 2 weeks of July - fewer accidents, more awareness of needing to go, etc. Then we went out of town again. We resorted to pull-ups and diapers a lot during that weekend - it was just too much of a hassle to deal with the potty while traveling. But, when we got back we were able to "reset" them and get working on it again. At this point I think things really started to click for the girls, especially when some older cousins visited us and the girls really wanted to show off their potty skills.
 

Lucas is sitting on one of the little IKEA potties.

Cute Moments:
When Lucas finally peed on the potty, the girls cheered for him. Abby even gave him a pat on the back, a hug and a kiss.

One time Zoey helped Lucas get to the potty when he needed to poop and stayed in there for moral support. 

They like to pick out underwear for each other and hand each other toilet paper when on the potty.

Abby wasn't sure she wanted all this help.

 Playing peekaboo with the shower curtain


 

 

 





Not so Cute Moments:
The kids have been able to remove their diapers for awhile. Now they like to remove their poopy diapers and try to dump the poop in the toilet (they see us do this all the time). The other day this resulted in the contents of Abby's diaper being spilled in the middle of our kitchen floor. Ick.

Abby still likes to go #2 in her diaper sometimes. Recently I was changing her diaper and it was taking awhile to clean her up. She was whining about all the wiping, and I said "well, if you pooped in the potty it wouldn't be as hard for me to clean you up". To which she responded, "no shit". [honestly, I think it was "oh shit" but it sure sounded like "no" instead of "oh"!]. To top it off, while this was happening, apparently Zoey had peed in a little potty and she and Lucas had attempted to pour the pee into the toilet. They were not successful. Cue the rags and spray vinegar.

I was helping Zoey on the potty when I heard a commotion from the next room. Lucas came running into the bathroom with wet undies in one hand and a pile of poop in the other hand. For a kid who hates it when there are crumbs in his high chair, he didn't seem to be grossed out at all. I yelled "holy shit, " then he cheerfully dropped the poop in the toilet (after I quickly got Zoey out of the way), flushed it ("bye poop") and washed hands as if it was all no big deal. Again, ick.

Current Status:
As of their almost-29-month-birthday, here's where we are with training:

Zoey is 90-95% reliable with using the potty. She occasionally has accidents but usually does not. She can stay dry during nap but we still put a diaper on her for sleep most of the time. When she wakes up in the morning she wants to take off her diaper and put on underwear. She can keep the same pair of underwear dry all day. She does not like to be told when to go use the potty and usually does not need help.

Abby is 75-95% reliable. She can also go a whole day without an accident, but she is more likely to pee a little in her undies, realize it, and then run to the potty to finish. She gets really sad and discouraged when this happens and often wants to put on a diaper after an accident. It makes me sad to see her lose confidence. I'm finding that pull-ups help somewhat because she still runs to the potty to pee but she doesn't have the same sadness about getting the pull-ups damp as she does about the underwear.

Lucas...ah, Lucas. He really wants to be just like his sisters and wear underwear. Alas, I think he is just not understanding his body's signals yet. He can sit and sit and sit and produce nothing, then stand up and a minute later has peed on the floor. He has recently peed in the potty a couple of times at bedtime (15 minutes after his nightly milk...hmmm...) and has pooped in the potty a couple of times too. But he is more likely to just have accidents if he is in underwear, and he really doesn't care if he pees or poops in his undies. I don't really expect him to get it at this point, since boys usually train later, but I am perplexed about how to help him make progress.

So, there you have it. It is still a work in progress, but it is so much easier now having the girls mostly trained. I feel like when Lucas is really ready we'll be able to focus more intently on him because we won't be trying to train 3 at once. I guess the next step for the girls will be giving up the diapers while sleeping, but I'm not in a rush to do that. I don't need any extra laundry right now!