Potty Training: It's Official

This past week, we started to officially potty train Jude. He is almost 2 years and 2 months old - and so he's on the young side of the time frame I thought was appropriate to start training him.

Recently he seemed to be showing some signs of being ready. One day he came in and sat on his potty all by himself while I was peeing and went to the bathroom - he was thrilled with himself. Also, he runs around the house half naked a lot, because I dabble in some form of ECing and one day he started to tinkle on the floor while we were playing - stopped mid-stream and ran to the bathroom.

In the course of the last couple of months, we've seen a few other signs and just felt it was time to take the plunge. Last Saturday, on our way to the beach (more to come on that) Ryan and I discussed it and we decided that from that point on we would not put Jude in a diaper again (outside of bedtime and very long car rides). We picked up a pack of disposables to have for these occasions (since it would be pointless to wash 2-3 cloth diapers every couple of days) and started the journey.

As I said, we were on our way to the beach. We would be at the beach as a family over night and then Jude and I would be spending the greater part of the week there without Ryan. I'm not totally sure what convinced us to do this while we would be away from home, but whatever the motivation it worked. Even though we spent very little time at the condo we were staying at - and were out and about regularly, Jude took to the whole toilet training like a pro. We of course had a small handful of accidents, but usually no more than once a day.

My cousin's son was there and he really helped with the process too. Using him as an example really got Jude motivated to use the toilet like a 'big boy'.

Upon returning home, we weren't sure what to expect. Would it require re-training in our at-home environment? Would it flow seamlessly from one place to another? Well, the first day home, he had a couple of accidents pretty immediately. I think I attribute it to being in a diaper for the car ride and the running around getting things back in the house and put away, but regardless, he got right back on track.

I'm curious to see how the rest of the process goes and am just hoping it's complete by the time our little buddy Liam decides to make and appearance.