Potty Training Pandemoneum

So that time had come....preschool starts in September and well, the mandate is that children must be fully potty trained to attend. Given that we barely make the age cut-off (by a day!) and will just have turned three, the kids are by far the youngest in the class, I knew that this could be a big undertaking. I read books, researched on the internet, solicited the input of fellow mom friends who've been there, done that, and we made a plan. I had a fairly clear idea of who was really ready and who I would be sort of "forcing" into this, but given our commitment to preschool we didn't have much choice. My suspicions were right and without "outing" any one kid I will say we had one who completely rose to the challenge and was nearly 100% trained in about 4-5 days (even naps and nighttime!)....one who was doing pretty well but had a fear of doing #2 on the potty, which we eventually found a way to overcome....and one who initially just didn't seem to get it AT ALL. Well, 2 very messy weeks later (both figuratively and literally), I am so pleased to report that all are spending their days in big kid underpants and we've even started venturing out into public again, albeit with lots of visits to public restrooms which its own harrowing adventure. We're averaging one accident a day (total, not per kid!) and for now I'm happy with that and so proud of my big kids!

Jeff and I are exhausted...potty training 3 kids at one time requires a lot of supervision (not much time for anything else) and a lot of trips back and forth to the bathroom to empty potty chairs. I hate potty chairs. They are messy and I've stooped over to pick one up probably dozens, maybe hundreds, of times in the last few weeks. We will be converting to the regular toilet with an adaptor as soon as the never-ending potty parade finally ends. Right now there's a lot of monkey-see, monkey-do where one kids announces they need to go, the others follow and we've got three on their potties at one time. No good way to manage that traffic with one toilet on the main level. They're also motivated to "perform" in order to earn a mini M&M or marshmallow for their efforts.

Just like every other new skill, some day this will be no big deal. For now I'll just try to enjoy how sweet each of them is when they have that look of pride and accomplishment when they are successful each day.