Hallelujah!!

It's happened!! It's happened!! The day I've been anticipating for a year now has finally arrived - my 3 year and 3 month old son is officially potty trained!! (Insert angelic choir, trumpets, harp and parting skies to the heavens here).

I swear (well, not in front of Merrick) that we have tried everything under the sun to get this kid potty trained. We tried bribing him with chocolate and candies. We tried bribing him with toys. We tried all sorts of underwear from Elmo to airplanes to cars. Each would last for a couple days off and on and then it was back to the Pull Ups.

We even tried, as a last resort, saying to him after he turned 3 - "okay honey, you are such a big boy now so we are going to go through the house and get rid of all the Pull Ups!"....this was over a weekend and while there were many accidents (to be expected) and MUCH fussing, we stuck to our guns. But then once he got to school I got a call from the teacher in the late afternoon about how Merrick had a big sobbing meltdown at school about it, so she finally put him back into Pull Ups. "It's just not like Merrick to get so upset, so I didn't feel right making him wear underwear". Hmm....guess she hasn't been privy to our cryfests and meltdowns here at home. But it also made me feel bad - I didn't want Merrick so upset over this.

After Craig and I talked, we didn't feel right forcing him into doing this either if he wasn't ready. Merrick really does like to have control and there are plenty of other battles I have to fight in this area. I just didn't think this was worth making it a battle - I wanted it to be HIS accomplishment.

So we took our final and last approach...we pretended we didn't care. Every morning we would casually say, as he was getting dressed, "do you want to wear underwear or Pull Ups?" And every morning, the answer was "Pull Ups". He would occassionally use the potty at home, but NEVER at school. After over 3 months of this, I was really starting to think we were going to be sending him off to college with a year's supply of Pull Ups. But we stuck to it, we were NOT going to push this issue; we needed him to do it on his own.

All of the sudden, last Friday when I picked him up from school, a teacher that is not his regular casually mentioned that he used the potty. He had NEVER, EVER, EVER done that at his school. I was so surprised!! So I told him how proud I was, etc, and he said "Mommy, I'm done with Pull Ups".

I hesitated celebrating too early because I thought maybe he'd go back to Pull Ups the next day. But he meant it - he hasn't gone back to Pull Ups. So here we are, 1 week later, and he is officially potty trained!!!!