Potty then underwear or underwear then potty?

The chicken then the egg        or         the egg then the chicken?

that is the question…

 
Well, we have now answered that question.

It’s the underwear then the potty!

For a while Alex has been showing all the signs he is ready to go potty.  His diaper is dry when he gets up from a nap, he knows when he is going (and announces it), he holds his poops until he gets home from preschool (“saving it for us” as they say it at preschool), etc. 

And we’ve been asking him if he wants to go potty like a big boy – but, no luck. 

We celebrated his 3rd birthday and talked a lot about how 3 year olds go pee-pee in the potty and we thought this would do the trick.  We would offer quite a bit – but still no luck. 

We didn’t want to push and we didn’t want to make a big deal out of this.  So, when he said no, we just said OK.

Finally – when Grandma Sandy was over not too long ago – she caught something that we had missed.

When we asked Alex if he wanted to go pee-pee in the potty – he would say “No, I’m not wearing underwear”.   We would say something to the effect that he needs to go pee-pee in the potty first, then he’ll wear underwear. 

The greatness of Grandma Sandy (Thank you!) – She suggested to us that he wear underwear first!!!!!  It was the underwear first, then the pee-pee in the potty that followed!!!! 

Ding Ding Ding – you are a winner!

We tried it this weekend, but he had one accident and didn’t want to do it again.  His confidence was a bit shaken.  We tried it after coming home from preschool in the evenings and have had some luck. 

Then, Tuesday morning when getting ready to go to Preschool – he wanted to wear underwear and I said OK.  We put on the underwear (superman underwear to be specific!) and he had a big pee in the potty.  He wore his underwear to Preschool and we brought some extra clothes and underwear for him, just in case. 

When we came to pick him up today – we got the fabulous news – he stayed dry all day and went pee-pee in the potty, no accidents.  Everyone was cheering him on at Preschool, saying what a big boy he was.  The teachers would remind/ask him if he had to go every ~45 minutes and sometimes he said yes and sometimes no.

He is so proud of himself and we are too.

We’ll see how it goes – we’re letting him take the lead.