Potty Training Update

We are full-fledged potty training now. We had to. After about 2 months of doing the routine, Balian was still just not even caring if his diapers were wet, so we had to go to training pants (The Gerber kind). At home we just let him go around in a shirt and the cloth trainers. When we're out and about, or he needs to be dressed, we put the plastic pants over the trainers. Since the trainers are less absorbant, it's necessary to take him potty a lot more often than with diapers. However, within 2 days of putting him in the trainers, he was starting to pat himself where he wet, and didn't like it. YAY!

Then life happened...
Balian got an ear infection, but still wanted to potty train. So we continued, and he continued to do well...
Then, we had to go out of town for a weekend for my grandfather's funeral...
then we had Christmas...
and we went to Louisiana for New Year's.

After the funeral, he started resisting going to the potty (didn't want to be interrupted from play-time and would just sit down and whine - no fun.) Between that and Christmas being within the same week, Balian was beginning to regress. We started getting back on track the day before we left to go to Louisiana, so once there, we broke down and started giving M&Ms as a reward for being all-dry (in an attempt to keep things going well), and while we were there he actually did really well. We had a day where he only had 2 accidents (one that wasn't his fault - I just wasn't paying enough attention).

So now, we give M&Ms when he's dry AND goes on the potty. nothing when he's wet.
We set the timer for 20 min, on average, and take him when the timer goes off, unless he "tells us" that he's either wet, or needs to go before that.

The main problems:
1. He's been waking up at night because of not liking his wet diaper, but he will go back to sleep.
2. He's been waking up at nap-time because he needs to go potty - and he WONT go back to sleep!
3. Balian has a lot more accidents when he's with Neil, rather than me.
4. lack of vocabulary. If we don't watch him like a hawk, we don't know that he's walking to the potty and telling us he needs to go. He just doesn't have the vocabulary that Bella did at this age, in the least, and although he can do the signs for going potty, he doesn't use them.

However, he is still showing signs of improvement, definitely. I just have to keep reminding myself that boys are so much different (and take so much longer) than girls.

The Good things:

1. He's started to really try to go every time we take him (perhaps because of the M&Ms), which usually means less accidents in-between.

2. He's also started just walking to the bathroom when he needs to go (although this doesn't happen very often...it does happen sometimes).

3. We have usually taken Balian to the kid's bathroom to use the potty. Yesterday, though, He took me to my bathroom because he had to go (more convenient sometimes because it's closer to the kitchen/livingroom area). So, I got another on-the-potty seat for our bathroom. It has ducks on it, which he likes. It's also a bit longer than the other one, and Balian can see himself peeing, and is somewhat fascinated by it - such a boy. He points down and says "that!" as he's peeing. Yes, it's funny, but it's also a huge thing for a boy to see himself going. Since I'm not ready to teach him to stand up and go yet, it's a great thing - so I'm excited about it :)

We'll see if he picks up on it better since things have calmed down for now. I'll keep updating as things progress.