2 Down and 1 to go!! WooHoo!!

Praise the Lord! We have another child potty trained!! I really can hardly believe it myself. This must have certainly been a reprieve from the Lord since he gave us that nice little surprise we now call Nicholas!! Here is the background: My five year old was quite tough to train in the poopie department. If you're a mom, you know what I'm talking about. The pee-pee training seems to come along quite nicely only to be followed by the sheer terror children have of going poopie on the pottie. Psychologists say it is because they think they are losing a part of themselves. Whatever, right? I don't care the psychology behind it, just give me something that will help them go!! So anyway, my now 5 year old trained easy in the pee-pee department but continued to have accident after accident in the poop dept. I thought I was going to lose my mind! To this day he still has issues with going poopie! So my 2ND child just turned 2 at the end of July. At the beginning of the month, we went and stayed a week with my mom at the family lake house. The kids were outside alot and the place is pretty secluded so we let my 5 year old go pee-pee outside. My 2 year old thought that was great and once he started seeing his older brother go potty, he decided that he wanted to go to. i didn't really think anything about it at the time, I just chalked it up to copying his brother and thought it would pass. When we came home from the lake, my 2 year old continued asking to go potty. This eventually wore off. However, my 5 year old went for a week by himself to visit my in-laws in VA and I thought, "Oh this would be a great time to start really potty training". No distractions from the older one, not as much playing in the basement etc. So I made a go at it. Amazingly, he got it. In about 4 days!! Pooping and all!! He had 3 accidents in the poop dept and about the same in the pee-pee and then he just got it. He asks to get on the potty to pee-pee and to poop. I can hardly believe it.
Now that he is going great, I have to ask myself, "What did I do so different this time?" and I think the answer that question is this: My expectations were much lower than the first time. Also, I didn't lose my patience when he had an accident. I just told him it was ok, and it was just an accident and put him on the potty and said, "Next time we need to (pee-pee, poop) on the potty ok?" I'm thinking that since I was so much more laid back about it that he did not feel stressed out about it either. This is not the norm for a 2 year old though. And if you are potty training and things are going terribly and you just can't keep your patience, take a break!! Your child may not be ready yet and there is no sense in stressing yourself out about the accidents or making your child feel bad for having an accident. Go back to diapers and try again in another month or 2. They may be ready by then.

So that's my news and advice for today. Only 1 in diapers now is certainly a huge financial gain!! You feel like you totally move into a different phase once you get through the potty training! What a relief. However, I do feel the good Lord must have given us a reprieve! Thanks God, You are so Good!! All the time!!