Potty Time?!?!?!?

News flash, news flash....This morning, Rachel peed on the potty!

You have probably heard by now about my very frustrating trials and tribulations in the potty training department with this one. Suffice it to say, that today's incident marked the first time since FEBRUARY 15 of this year that Rachel peed on the potty and not in her diaper or on the floor. (That February time was, in hindsight, a fluke....I put her on the potty after we got home from Meijer Gardens and she peed. Never happened again.)

It's so funny, and so typical Rachel, how it all went down (ha, a pun!). But first, some background. The past two weeks, I have been a lot more insistent that she try to sit on the potty multiple times a day. Sometimes when I am feeling like being a particularly consistent parent, I will set the timer for every 5-10 minutes and make her try every time it goes off. The child can hold pee like you wouldn't believe. There are days when she's put into a dry pull-up in the morning, and said pull-up is still dry at 1 pm. These are the times when I get really hard-nosed about it, hoping we'll get lucky, but I always miss the window. Nothing more frustrating than a WARM, wet pull-up! Oh yes, and we've pretty much switched to pull-ups exclusively (except for bed times). I had hoped that she would not want to get her pretty Dora and Princess pull-ups wet, but so far, no such luck in that department. She could care less.

So today, we had gotten home from Megan's soccer game, and were in the process of simultaneously changing out of our layered clothes and talking to Grammy and Gaga on the phone. I had taken Rachel's pants off in order to remove her second layer of pants, and told her we were going to try to go potty, so we also took her pull-up off (which, I might add, was the same dry one I put on her at 7 am). But we were still getting ready upstairs and talking on the phone, so she ended up hanging out sans pants for awhile. We made our way down the stairs, Rachel still without any pants on. I was being lazy and just letting her run around that way while I finished talking to my mom and dad. No sooner had I hung up the phone when Rachel comes running into the living room shouting, "Mama! Come look!" I followed her into the bathroom, where she excitedly showed me that there was definitely bright yellow pee in the toilet! At first I was skeptical, thinking Megan had forgotten to flush, but Megan assured me that she had, and indeed, I remembered vaguely hearing a flush while I was still on the phone. Rachel insisted, "No, it was me!" And sure enough, I'm certain that it was! She had put the Dora potty seat on the toilet, arranged the stool, climbed up, peed, and even wiped herself, all without me there. She was SOOO excited and proud, and Megan and I made a REALLY big deal of this event! Rachel finally earned a peanut butter cup (my latest bribery attempt, after others have failed), as well as a sticker on the long-dormant "pee chart."

The funny thing about this is how she did it all by herself. There's that independent personality! Granted, lately she has often told me to leave the bathroom and close the door, preferring to be in there by herself ("Space!" she will say.). Usually I hover outside the door, listening for that blessed sound that never comes. Today I was nowhere near enough to hear, and if her pee hadn't been so concentrated from holding it so long, I just might not have believed it!

We can't wait to tell Daddy about it when he gets home from his trip this afternoon! I only hope and pray that this is not another fluke incident, not to occur again for another 8 months. Here's to turning corners (fingers crossed)!