Potty Training and Just Plain Cuteness

OK, yes, I'm trying to become one of those moms that blog non-stop about their adorable kids but that is just because my entire family are in different states and I hate the phone. :) I've been recently talking to everyone about potty training Kate and how it has been something I have been dreading since before she was born. A lady I used to work with at Avista gave me some great PT advice informing me that the quickest way to get a child trained was to ingrain it in her head. Everyone out there in blog land is rolling their eyes going, "Duh!" I would like to say that piece of advice was easier said than done and go off on a huge rant about how difficult it was to potty train Kate but that was simply not the case.

The advice given to me was to take our kid to the potty every 15 minutes, whether she has to go or not, to let her know that this is where she goes pee pee or poo poo. It took a few tries but Kate picked up the habit, yelling in terror that she has to go potty and then I would drop everything I was doing and we would bolt into the bathroom to make sure she made it without an accident. Once she understood the bathroom concept, she would follow Lucky and I in or push the door open to grandly inform us that we were going potty. She would even clap for us and say "yay!" in congratulations. Do we really look like that when we congratulate her??? Needless to say, we haven't gotten any privacy in the bathroom since.

I also had the idea of making Kate a chart to show her potty progress and awarding her after so many successes. After every time she went in the potty, she got to put a star on her potty chart. After 10 stars she got a prize, ranging from ice cream to a new coloring book to a new dress. It has been going really well, and we figure that after she completes the chart she will be fully potty trained, but Kate has been filling up the boxes a little too fast. In one trip to the mall we had to buy her a new shirt, a coloring book and get her a cookie...So now instead of getting a star after every trip to the bathroom, she only gets a star if she goes #2 in the potty at home.

Here is a picture of Kate's potty chart.

Here are some more pics of Kate being stinking cute this morning.