Our Big Boy

We have been slowly progressing towards potty training Jacob ever since we bought him a little potty on his 2nd birthday. We mostly let him just sit on it when he wanted, usually right after we changed his diaper, but nothing ever happened. Around September we bought him some underwear and he loved it so much we let him start wearing it over his diapers for a few months. Towards the beginning of November we started using a sticker chart and giving him a sticker every time he sat on the potty, even though to this point he had never been successful. A week and half later he started doing underwear "sessions" and just practiced wearing underwear for a few hours at a time, usually only about once, maybe twice a day. Naturally he'd have accidents, but would always jump right up and announce he was wet. After doing this for about a week, and then taking a break when we had family in for Thanksgiving, a few days after my family left, Jacob finally went to the potty all by himself! We gave him a ton of praise and special stickers and treats, and ever since then he's gone several times a day!
After getting two special stickers on his chart, Jacob got a special Christmas tree cake for using the potty all by himself for the first time. He was very proud of himself!
By now, Jacob's sticker chart is all filled out, it didn't take him that long at all since he loves to go potty now! He still got smaller stickers for trying, and would get special shape stickers when he actually went. In the beginning, he would literally want to go potty every 10-30 minutes, so it took up a lot of time! But now that he goes so well and we've finished our sticker chart, he suddenly doesn't need to go so often, but he still goes, just doesn't need all the motivation. We still let him know that we are very proud of him though!

And after using his little potty for a week, we moved the little seat to fit on the big toilet and he uses a stool to get up by himself. And though he could go #2 in his little potty, he has yet to go in the big toilet, he seems a little too scared to do it yet, but I know he'll get there soon enough. Jacob has also exceeded my expectations with nap and nighttime as about half the time when he wakes up from a nap or in the morning he's dry! So he's great at holding it for awhile and is good about getting up out of bed to go potty, even when he's in a diaper. So we are really proud of him and how quickly he picked it all up once we finally got going.

So we've also let him wear underwear when we go out if it's not for very long or we're running easy errands, but diapers still on longer trips. But he has used public restrooms and has done great, no public accidents yet. So he's not fully trained, but very close! We're just about ready to let him wear underwear out all the time, and have trusted him with underwear about half the time for naps, and he's done great!

As a special treat for Jacob learning to use the potty, last weekend we surprised him and took him to see Toy Story on Ice! He loved it and it was a really fun show! Unfortunately I lost my camera right before the show but I took some on Luke's phone, maybe I'll add some later. Either way, we are super proud of Jacob and how quickly he's growing up!