A Monumental Day in the Howard Home

For the past few months Quincy has taken a real interest in the toilet. He likes to be involved when anyone is going to the bathroom. He even has a certain fascination about how it works and what goes in the toilet. This has been promising for us that there will be days of HIM actually USING the toilet.

(Oh the days when we won't have to pay for diapers anymore!)


Last year before Christmas my parents gave us a potty chair; they knew Quincy was still too little for potty training, but figured that the following year it would be more age appropriate. After some failed attempts in trying to get Quincy "excited" about the potty we gave up. It was apparent that he was too young to appreciate it.

However, for the past few months he has been really good about telling us when he needs to go poop, and even initiates telling us when he needs his diaper changed. We thought that this transition from diapers to potty chair would be easy and happen earlier than we anticipated. We were wrong. Although his concept of the potty was becoming better, he still refused to go anywhere near it.

He would scream if we tried to coax him into actually sitting on it. You would think we were trying to get him to sit on the top of an alligator's mouth by his reaction. Again, we decided that he would eventually warm up to. Weeks went by, months went by.... no warming up to the potty. He was practically terrified of it.


Then one day we got the bright idea to let him "decorate" his potty.... so that it might be more user friendly. Perhaps he would feel more comfortable using the potty if it was more inviting.


Yesterday we went to Walmart as a family and let Quincy pick out his very own stickers. He picked some fish ones. Then when we got home we let him decorate his potty. I was thinking we'd put maybe a couple of stickers on it and call it good. Quincy had other plans; he saw that I had a whole bag FULL of stickers and decided that it was his duty to use every last single one of them.



And he did.





I let him put the stickers wherever he waned, though it was secretly killing me that they weren't spaced evenly and he kept grouping 'like' things together.... close together.

At any rate, I wanted him to feel special and know that he had a big part in making the potty his VERY own.


And do you know what happened?



He loved it.

He was so happy admiring his potty.

He pointed to every one of the stickers he put on it.

He even........dare I write this..... sat on the potty. BY HIMSELF.

No crying, no screaming, no running away with a terrified look on his face.

He sat down on his potty chair like it was no big deal and he'd been doing it his entire life.
It was a big deal in our home.... and if things slowly progress how we would like them to..... it was the best $1.96 ever spent at Walmart.


Seriously.



And to add upon yesterday's miricle, Quincy was talking about his potty when he woke up first thing this morning.

It would seem this is going to be quite the fun adventure for our family.... thanks to the fish stickers!