Adventures in potty land

Don't wanna get my hopes up too much, but Lyra just walked into the bathroom on her own and used her little potty to go pee. We had just taken off a dirty diaper and she was roaming free at the moment. I noticed she kept walking back to the bathroom so I went and checked on her and saw she had gone pee! Lisa and I clapped for her and she looked real pleased with herself. Often I will ask her to sit on the potty after we take off a dirty diaper and then tell her in a sing-song voice,"Pee in the potty!" Usually she just smiles, gets up and walks away. Could it be she is starting to make the connection? That would be great. Cause, seriously, who wouldn't like to stop changing diapers as soon as possible? Especially cloth diapers.

This picture was taken when Lyra was about 4 months old and I had just started putting her on the potty.  I had read about infant potty training and thought it sounded pretty interesting, so we decided to try it out. At least part-time.  Those smiles during potty time didn't last forever unfortunately. I used to put her on the potty a lot more all day, at least once an hour, and she'd go quite often. But the older she got, the more independent she wanted to be and she did NOT appreciate me interrupting her play-time to go sit on the potty. So we bought a little potty she could sit on by herself and started trying that with limited success. For awhile, strangely enough, she would pee standing up in the bathtub every time without fail, but not on the potty. Hmm. As more time went on, I realized we would just have to settle for encouraging her to sit on the potty right after we change her diaper or if I notice she seems to be working on something, I'll rush her to the potty and see if we can catch it. Sometimes that works. But recently, if she is roaming diaper-less, she has been going on her own and sitting down for a second on the potty.  This morning, her timing was right on! I think taking this approach has actually been really good for me because I've had more patience with a baby learning something new than I did with Lisa, as a toddler, who I felt had the language skills, but was just defiant and stubborn. With Lyra, it's been a long, slow process focusing on communication, whereas with Lisa I was more demanding of her and expected her to just get it right away, which was pretty unrealistic of me. I haven't used any reward system so far with Lyra, other than verbal praise. So anyway, we'll see what happens over the next few months!