Nate & Ellie: Almost There!

I am almost caught up but my hands are getting tired. Forgot to mention the most awesome of things, which is that NATHAN IS POTTY TRAINED! YAY YAY YAY YAY. We had made a lot of progress in JC before we left and then had a setback with all the transition so we started up again and were struggling to find the correct approach that would work for Nathan...Knowing how smart he is, Scott and I just got so frustrated that he would go in his diaper when he knew how to go in the potty. So out came the potty training books and internet researching and I was in the middle of about three of them when I discovered that all recommended that the child have their own potty. So off Nate and I went to Target where he picked his own potty (Fisher Price "singing" potty) and he got to pick where he would put it (basement where interestingly enough he was going to poop anyway) and we were off! We had some success with peeing and hit or miss (haha) with pooping and then he started to go more consistently. We did toys for every time he pooped which he quickly caught on to, but it just wasn't consistent enough to make us hopeful that it would ever end! What helped was Nathan going to speech therapy every week at preschool, asking to go to school, and me reinforcing that he can't go to school until he didn't wear diapers anymore...that, in conjunction with his birthday coming up and "three year old big boys don't wear diapers" seemed to be the magic pill that worked and literally the week of his birthday he only wanted to wear big boy underwear. It is still amazing to me. We have not conquered nighttime yet, but we have had a few mornings with dry diapers so I am hopeful that it will be soon. Our son is so amazing and everyone is so right about "when they are ready, they're ready." Saved me some reading.

Will post later about his birthday....