nutso for potty time

Yes, I am certifiable. I decided to potty train a 23 month old while working full time, planning a massive 2 year birthday party, starting an IVF cycle (more on that later this week), juggling Brian's new job and being generally crazy busy. But hey, who doesn't like a challenge? 

And ya'll, Lila is working her little butt off (no pun intended) at this potty training business. Sister be all about the potty treats! Here are the details on the things that have and have not worked for us in potty training so far: 

• Spend all weekend in the house ala the Potty Training In 3 Days Method.
•  Keep Lila naked from the waist down. This allows her to feel when she is going pee, as opposed to diapers which make it harder to notice. She hates it running down her leg (duh, who wouldn't?)
• Let her roam about the house like she normally would, playing and moving around. We just laid towels all over the carpet in our living room so accidents were not a big deal.
• Have her sit on the potty as often as possible. We watched TV on the potty, read books on the potty, ate snacks on the potty, etc. The first couple of times she actually peed in the potty were purely coincidental since she happened to be sitting there. 
• Act like it is the biggest moment since your first Backstreet Boys concert when she finally goes. We screamed, we laughed, we pointed, we clapped. We told her how proud we were and immediately gave her a "Potty Treat". 
• We used M&M's as "Potty Treats." At first, every time she sat on the potty for a few minutes, we gave her one and clapped about sitting on the potty. Then we just gave her one when she went potty, whether or not it was in the actual potty. Then we only gave her one when she went in the right place. 
• Never make them feel bad for accidents. As soon as she started peeing while standing up, we would run with her to the potty (usually peeing while she ran) and sit down. Eventually she learned to stop if she started, run to the potty and finish there. This is happening less and less. 
• After she went in the potty, we ran to the toilet together, dumped it in the toilet, flushed it and waved bye-bye to the potty and danced around clapping. Yes, we looked crazy but she thought she had just won a Nobel Peace Price. 
• We stayed in the house for two solid days doing this and only put a diaper on for nap and bed. The third day was at daycare and we asked them to do the same. We have slowly been working in more time wearing panties so she gets used to having to give us enough notice to run to the bathroom and pull them down.

Have we put spots all over our carpet? Absolutely. Did she pee while sitting on our bed today? Unfortunately yes. But we are glad we started before she got too old and realized she had a choice in the whole matter. And we realize this age is not the right age for everyone. Lila was giving us lots of signs before we considered it: staying dry in her diapers 2-3 hours at a time (sometimes throughout her whole nap), telling us before she would poop, going to get a clean diaper when she had peed or pooped, and spending lots of time sitting on her potty that was just out to get her used to it. And the day I stop paying half of my salary to Pampers is going to be a beautiful thing. Plus it means I get to eat M&M's all day for "quality control."