Potty Party!

Last Saturday evening we had a Potty Party for Jackson. Now, you may be saying to yourself "what is a Potty Party?". Well, that is a very good question. It is a question that we did not have a good answer for on Saturday and I can probably only feebly answer today, but I will give it a shot.

Years ago in anticipation of the potty training days Justin bought a book called "Potty Train Your Child in Just One Day". We all know how anal Justin is (pun intended) so it didn't seem unusual to me that he wanted to get a head start on learning the ins and outs (pun intended) of potty training. Well, as it turns out, neither of us ended up reading the book, but I skimmed through it once and thought that I got the gist of it. What I learned from my skimming was that we needed to have a Potty Party. Never mind the details of what a Potty Party consists of, I thought we could just wing it. We set the day for Saturday and invited the Grandparents. Saturday rolled around and we opened the book just to see what preparations we needed to make. Well, it turns out there is a lot more to it than can take place in one day, so I created my own version of the Potty party, which in the end has actually turned out to be quite successful.

I decorated the kitchen and the bathroom. We sort of had a Spiderman theme. When the grandparents arrived we opened gifts. Grandma Cersey brought a gift and then I had a special gift prepared. In our gift to Jackson was what I like to call the Potty Puppy (picture below), some big boy underwear, a calendar, and some stickers. After opening presents he decorated what we call the Potty Box (pictures also below). Then we had cookie cake. After eating I told Jackson that his Potty Puppy needed to go potty so we went to the decorated bathroom, which he was excited about. We set the Potty Puppy on the potty and waited, but the puppy wasn't able to go because he didn't know how, so we asked Jackson to show the puppy how to use the potty. To our amazement Jackson actually did poop on the potty! Then of course he expected the puppy to know how to do it, so we placed the puppy back on the potty and I sneakily dropped some Raisinets in the toilet. He totally bought it. He may never look at Raisinets the same way again, but I think it is worth it. Anyway, then we placed a sticker on his potty calendar to display his success, and he got to pick a treat out of the potty box. We have larger and more fun toys in the bottom of the box for poopoo treats (trains, whistles, bouncy balls, candy, etc.) and smaller treats in the top portion of the box for peepee treats (candy and stickers).

So far the whole con is still working. Jackson asks to go to the potty all the time and we always take the Potty Puppy (the puppy doesn't have to go potty unless Jackson needs some coercing), and he always gets rewarded afterward. Of course, he has still peed in his diaper quite a bit, but he has placed all his #2s in the toilet since Saturday. I am so surprised and happy that this has worked. I guess I should keep my fingers crossed so that it continues working.

Obviously, Jackson doesn't know the correct way to wear his big boy underwear yet, but we'll get there. Drake on the other hand is sadly too young to potty train. You can see the result of his most recent bowel movement below. At least his shirt was appropriate for the occasion.