The Impossible Dream

This morning something I thought would never ever happen actually happened. It happened without me asking for it to happen, or nagging about it or even doing a little bit of "gentle encouraging" - Alana used her potty chair! I was in the kitchen at the computer and Alana came in all excited saying that she peed. I was hesitant to believe since she is 3 and tends to stretch the truth a bit. So I went into the bedroom where she had moved the potty chair, what can I say, she likes to watch TV on the pot, and sure enough there was a lot of pee. I almost didn't believe my eyes. I had thrown in the towel on potty training months ago. After all, you can't physically make someone go to the bathroom in the toilet if they really really don't want to. And she really really didn't want to. She would actually cry when you put her on the toilet.

Not that she never had small bits of success. Once during the summer David offered to buy her a Barbie if she peed on the toilet. So later that day after at least an hour of sitting in the bathroom, we went to Walmart and bought a purple mermaid Barbie. But we can't buy her a Barbie every time she uses the bathroom.

So now I'm holding my breath that she will be potty trained before we go to Disneyland next month. With everything I thought that she would never do because of her stubborn will she has made overnight progress. Its not an impossible goal, since she's already had a repeat of her success. She peed in the potty a second time just this morning. My only worry is that she won't want to use an actual toilet and I'm not carrying a bright green frog potty chair around everywhere I go. So for now I'm keeping my fingers crossed and putting a diaper on her when we go in public, because if you've ever left Walmart carrying a wet child because they just peed in the toy aisle, you know you're better off safe than sorry.