Potty Training Boys + Milestones of a 2.5 year old

Y’all. Potty training boys is EXACTLY as hard as they say it’s going to be! Seriously, life as a woman never prepared me for this. Potty training Azi has been a completely different animal than what we did for Miri just over a year ago.

For those of you who know Azi, you know that he’s a pretty sensitive little guy, who doesn’t do so well with change. On top of that, his feeding issues lead to some constipation issues. So I had fully planned to let him stay in diapers until he went to college. Ha! But really, I wasn’t planning to rush him into potty training.

But over the last few weeks, Azi started to ask me to change his diaper every time he went #2 and even sometimes when he just had a wet diaper. After 3.5 years of diapers (sister included), I’ve been getting pretty tired of it, so I knew that it was now or not for a really long time to capitalize on his diaper discomfort.

The process:

I loosely follow the “Oh Crap Potty Training” book/method. By loosely, I mean someone told me the premiss, and I made up my own rules from there. Poo, poo, poo Miri has had about 2 accidents since she “got on the potty train” (that’s what we call it in our house) and Azi isn’t doing so bad himself!

Day 1:

Drop the pants.

Literally. We make plans to have no plans, so we can be no more than 30 feet from the nearest toilet at any given hour, and we take off the diaper. I don’t mess around with pull-ups during the day because it just feels like another diaper to kids, which makes it harder to refrain from peeing in it.

The first time he went to the bathroom on the potty. Look how proud he was of himself. Making a BIG deal, makes them feel in charge and so accomplished!

Azi has been super into the different character undies I already had at the house “just in case”, so we put him right in undies. For Miri, we let her run around without underwear for a few days. I wrote a post about Potty Training Toddlers after her experience. You can check it out here.

Pee often.

And when I say often, I mean we took him to try every 15 minutes. He got a cookie after he made in the potty. Something that differed for Azi vs. when we potty-trained Miri, is that he wanted to pee standing up. Which has worked out fine so far, but we have to really emphasize the power of aim and making sure he gets the pee in the toilet.

Day 2:

Things were going well, but the only problem we experienced was that he ONLY wanted to stand up to go to the bathroom. Meaning, he had zero interest in sitting down to poop, even though I knew he needed to go. He was definitely holding it in.

By the end of the second day, I came up with such an amazing prize for when he would make a poop in the potty, that he went.

We were still taking him to the bathroom every 30-45 minutes.

Day 3:

Still difficult to get him to sit down on the potty for a #2. He did not go on Day 3. He was for sure holding it in. But the pee accidents in underwear got less frequent, and we made sure to take him to the bathroom every hour or so.

The dialogue was completely open to talking about how he was feeling. Did he need to make a poop? Did he feel like he had to make a pee? These were key questions in the process.

We’re now at Day 6, and things are going well. He has gone poop one more time on the potty, and it was cause for a grand celebration. He continues to remain dry in his underwear, and also dry in his pull-up at naps. I don’t even try to night train my kids at this age; however, I do bring them to the bathroom “in their sleep” before I go to sleep at night. I want them to get used to getting up and going to the bathroom in the middle of the night.

Other Azi Updates:

He is still in Feeding Therapy. See my first post about that here. We’re very thankful that he is capable of eating most foods now, but he is just a VERY picky eater. I also wrote a blog post on this topic that has proven to be very helpful for other moms. Look out for an updated post on the subject of eating, coming soon.

Azi also is still in Physical Therapy. He’s caught up to where he should be developmentally, and we are just finishing up in the next couple of months, helping him excel in climbing, jumping and riding a scooter.

As far as behavior, well, we’re really in the thick of it with the terrible twos. Azi is an incredibly, strong-willed little boy. Which makes transitions throughout the day difficult. We’re working on a few different best practices for us to help him get through the more difficult parts of the day — getting dressed, go upstairs for a nap or bedtime, meal times, snack times, etc. Basically every single transition that happens throughout our day has to be played just perfectly, or else it will turn into a complete meltdown.

All this aside, he really has such a sweet temperament when he wants to. He LOVES to be cuddled and tickled. He craves that sensory feeling of touch. Oppositely, he is very sensitive to noises, so we also have to work through things in the real world there. He’s taken to calling me Mama, like a baby, and I don’t hate it. He’s growing up so fast, and I’m happy to keep him as my baby in a few ways before he won’t let me anymore.

It’s hard to believe that we have two toddlers.

We were so in the thick of having 2 babies under 1.5 years old, and then 2 under 2, for so long, that it feels so strange to think that I don’t have any babies in my house anymore. I can see this in little ways that our family functions, like having smaller toys (legos) that I’m not concerned if they’re left lying around (except for my poor feet, of course). I also am only cutting grapes and hot dogs in half now vs. into quarters. And some days I can even make it out of the house without carrying a human. They can both walk. It’s life changing. If you’re in that 2 under 2 stage of life that we were in for what felt like a lifetime, hang tight. I won’t tell you it gets easier, but certain things definitely get easier, and you also get better at handling those things that may seem like Hell right now.

Oh, did I mention that the best part is that they’re TOTALLY best friends? For better or for worse. They fight like the best of them, and they love even harder. One of my greatest joys as a mother is watching them laugh and play together. For that, I am eternally grateful.