"Tinkle, tinkle for little stars..."

Last week I decided that we needed to make potty training a priority. Lu will be 27 months old shortly...and frankly I'm sick of buying diapers. I hate diapers, they're expensive and wasteful. I'd love to do cloth with our next one but I don't have access to a washer and dryer at home. I'd have to drag my dirty diapers to the laundry room and pay a crazy amount of money/wasting a tonne of water washing 'em. Hard to figure out which would be better in the long run. My dad is really awesome about picking up diapers in his city (when he sees them on sale) and bringing them to us when he and my mother visit. It's like he's my second "baby daddy"...bringing diapers and (when Lu was small) formula.

Disposable diapers can be added to our compostable waste which is then picked up by the city. Unfortunately, my apartment building does not have a green box program. It's really frustrating when such options are available but big corporations only see the problems in instituting them as opposed to the benefits long term. I *could* sneak over to someone's green box on trash day and toss em in but how creepy would that be?

So we started potty training last week and it's been going quite well! I was surprised...people are always talking to me like every little thing she needs to accomplish will be difficult. When I cut her off of her pacifier, I was told to prepare for endless nights of crying. You know what? It was easy! I had a "sooce" addicted kid too...if she could've injected sooces into her veins directly, she would've done it! I took it away from her when she was 18 months old and explained that she was no longer a baby and that other babies were going to need her sooces. She helped us round them up and throw them out. She cried off and on that night as she tried to fall asleep without it. She eventually did and the rest is history...she never mentioned them again and we didn't miss them either.

When Lu was a year old, she would sit on her potty and go. We thought we had it made and she would be trained early. She, on the other hand, had other plans. After a month of training, she regressed until this point. I figured she was ready since she would tell us right after she had gone in her diaper. She knew she had to go...isn't that half the battle?

My plan was to create some kind of chart. A way for her and I to keep track of how often she was going. It helps motivate her like you wouldn't believe. We use small gold stars which she helps put on after she's gone to the potty. I don't think it's working because

of the stars but more because she is proud. She loves to show dh her progress and gets a high-five for her efforts!

As I'm typing, she is sitting on her potty. It's so rewarding knowing that your child is progressing in these big ways. Stuff that I dreaded having to go through, are actually easier than I thought. I guess I was being "bullied" into thinking that everything was going to be hard. Family and friends with their own kids love nothing better than to say how hard milestones will be to attain...I believed them. Guess you just have to take things as they come, only you know your kid!

Since last Wednesday, she has nearly 20 stars and I'm one happy momma. We've had the occasional accident in her underpants but she doesn't go on the floor. The accidents are 90% in her sleep which I can't fault her. It'll take some getting used to on her part but she's really handling it well. I'm lucky to have such a lovely easy-going miss.