Being three weeks into my first born's potty training experience, I wanted to record a couple of things that I have learned so far.
1. You will spend a lot of time looking at a half naked little man. So you have been changing his diapers since birth but it goes to a new level. You will find yourself in a stare down with those little "boy bits" hoping/praying for something to happen.
2. You will get familiar with collecting wet clothes in plastic bags like this:
3. You will always leave your bathroom light on to save on time, especially once they get the hang of getting to the bathroom and pulling time their pants.
4. You will need extra pants/shorts. I find myself not having enough although I have the same number of bottoms that I had always had! Daycare needs two extra sets of clothes at all times, backup in the car, the diaper bag, and the gym bag which takes 5 pairs out of commission over here before daily use comes into play. (The same goes for underwear!)
5. Boy bits need to be pointed down...this should be self explanatory but I end up with dry pants getting sprayed down the back while using the toilet. Also movement of the person on the potty may cause misalignment for the second flow of pee.
6. Crying "potty" will be used as a form of "I can get immediate attention!"
7. You will need to safe guard some of your hard to clean daily use items. We still use a high chair with our little one, it keeps him focused on eating instead of trying to get away three bites into the meal. This becomes a pain in the ass when there was an accident. I spent two hours taking apart our Space Saving Fisher Price highchair, washing the straps, removing the pee smell, and putting it back together-TWICE. The highchair is still not the same slightly reclining more than usual. I put a layer of press and seal down now with the cover on top of it. Also they make a thing called a piddle pad that we are using to safe guard the car seat!
8. We started with a seat that goes on the potty, this made it nearly impossible (especially without a constant "pee-pee" stare down to see if anything actually came out since there was not enough urine to see in the big bowl. We switched to a small frog potty that needed to be dumped and it was more visible to us all that something happened.
9. Moveable potty chairs can mean little butts try to scoot around on them, not good when liquids are involved!
10. No matter what potty- big or small is used, boys need a splash guard. Our toilet insert had a small hump in the front that did nothing resulting in more sprayed urine down the back pants.
11. Get some flushable wipes. We tried toilet paper and found wipes where much easier but didn't like them stinking up the small trash or want to risk flushing them.
12. My husband hates when I call Grant's underwear panties....
13. Check the weight on the underwear packs! I got the 2T/3T size thinking they would last a while but when I went to throw away the empty pack, the weight only went to 34 lbs. Grant is 2.5 yrs and weighes 31 lbs already. If you are unsure of the size, find a place that sells single pairs to test it out first. Size fours don't look overly big on him especially washed and dried!
14. Parents of boys can expect to pay more for the same number or less underwear than girl panties. I find that girls' underwear comes in packs with 2-4 more pairs then the boys for the same cost. (We found an eight pack at Sam's Club for $10, the best price I have found with various characters.
15. On our second day in underwear, I was lucky enough to find skidmarks. I was shocked, I wiped the boy cleaned- it took me long enough so I know he was clean but there was still a skidmark in his underwear! If you didn't already, buy the refillable bottle of spray & wash get comfortable!
