Drumroll please

My child has used the potty. Yes, that's right!!!!!

After a VERY rough road in getting started (which I will spare you the details of, but lets just say it involved LOTS of tears), I decided I had to bite the bullet and take away the diapers. I was prepared for the worst, which is what I honestly expected after Tyler told me last night that he was not going to wear underwear and I "can just go to Walmart and buy more diapers". Umm, no dice kiddo. So I told him that he had 3 diapers left and then he was done. Nada, no more. Crushed his little dreams of "no fanks, I'll use the potty maybe when I'm four".

So last night I did some serious soul-searching. I had NO idea if my plan was the right thing to do. Tyler is a child who has been through a ton of transitions in his life and I feared that the timing wasn't good with Al having just gotten back. But in the end I decided that what I was doing wasn't working either and considering I can't really foresee a time in our future that won't have rough transitions, I figured it's now or never.

He asked about it all morning, but the diapers held out through naptime. When he woke up he made it very clear that he was not about to start wearing underwear. Essentially I bribed him, and he took off his last diaper and tossed it, in exchange for half a pack of smarties. Then he started crying. Uh oh. Well, I managed to calm him down (aka: distract him), which I had somewhat expected. I thought for sure he'd freak when he actually had to go though (which is what has happened in the past when he wore underwear). Instead he tried to go a few times (not too unusual) and then on the last trip he froze up and was getting panicky when I noticed he was just starting to pee. So I literally held him up to the potty where he proceeded to pee. He got all excited and said "yeah, I get to flush AND I get a candy cane" (the prize he had picked). Well, I was pretty psyched, but realized we had just lucked out with timing. Well, to my total surprise, not even 10 minutes later he says "I have to go pee....and I'll do it myself". Well, lo and behold, he went on his step stool up to the big potty and peed. Granted I had to help him (he doesn't get the aim part quite yet), but he peed! Imagine my shock when he kept doing this over and over, and eventually even independently decided to poop.

Final tally: Peed 13 times, pooped 3 time, ZERO accidents!!!!!!!!!

He's currently in bed now and I'm on cloud nine. I realize that there can and likely will be setbacks (for all I know he could wake up tomorrow and this could all start over again at square one) but at least now I can lift this huge weight off my shoulders and know that I haven't emotionally scared him for life. At least not by this, I'm sure our time will come. LOL!