Dispatch from Potty Training Boot Camp

After a long time making very little progress in the arena of potty training, we decided to try a change of tactic. Our living room recently became the staging area for Potty Training Boot Camp.

Want to try your own? Here's what you need:

1) a potty seat, in the middle of a room you are willing to spend a lot of time in


2) a sippy cup, kept full of liquid to ensure many opportunities to practice using the potty seat


3) easy access to toilet paper (that's on our fireplace mantle), so you can do a quick wipe, then head to the actual bathroom to dump the potty seat and wash your hands


4) any toy, music, movie, activity that will keep your child in the room with the potty seat; we've watched a lot of George in the last couple of days

5) not pictured, toddler/preschooler with no pants on

We've tried to make this as easy/pleasant as possible, so Harper can just learn to recognize the feeling that she needs to go to the bathroom and react to that feeling. Later we'll conquer wiping, hand washing (which she can do, but with all that liquid, we'd spend several hours a day washing her hands), and getting pants and undies up and down. The first day Harper went totally bare-bottomed, the second and third day she's been wearing Curious George "big girl pants" which are easy to get on and off when not further complicated by another layer of clothing.

She's made it to the potty seat with only four or five mishaps in three days, which feels like real progress. Today we even ran some errands and used the toilet at a friend's house for a couple of hours, totally without incident. Yay Harper!

And now, my first attempt to put video in this blog. . .The sound and picture quality are not great. I'm just experimenting with the fact that I discovered I can record 20-second video clips on our camera. Enjoy!