Hayley and Kate Minter

I bought new underwear for Hayley the other day, and Kate wanted some too.  I thought, why not?  She’ll wear them eventually, right?

Well, Kate wanted to wear them as soon as we got home.  I let her since it was pretty close to bedtime and we would have to put her back in a diaper shortly.

The following day, she wanted to wear her underwear again.  Being a sucker, and feeling sorry for her because she was sick, I let her wear a pair again.  About 30 minutes later, she went to her potty, pulled down her panties and peed, much like Hayley and I had showed her how to do the previous night.  What a big girl!  I thought.  Wow, this potty training stuff is easier than I remember…

How wrong I can be.

I was busy doing housework and I heard Kate go into her bathroom again.  I went in to discover poop everywhere–in her panties, on her potty, on her legs, on the floor.  She had begun to go in her panties and tried to make it to the bathroom but in pulling her panties off, she just smeared the poop all over.  Oh, boy.  I couldn’t be mad at her, though–she had made a valiant effort.

After cleaning up the mess, I once again relented to letting her wear another pair of panties (thank goodness for the 7-pack).  But after two more accidents (both pee, thankfully), Mommy had had enough for one day and it was back to diapers.

Of course, what I should have done was purchase some Pull-Ups for her to use before real panties, and that’s what I’ll be doing this weekend.  I don’t want to discourage her desire to use the potty but I also don’t want to spend my entire day cleaning up mess after mess and washing out countless pairs of underwear.  I now realize that Kate can’t yet distinguish the feeling of the diaper versus the underwear.  If she’s totally naked on her bottom half, she’s nearly accident-free; she just runs right into the bathroom when she has to go and goes.  But I think having something on her bottom confuses her right now.  Which is why I’m hoping the Pull-Ups won’t be too much like diapers for her.  We’ll just have to try them and see.

Either way, she’s not even two years old yet, so I’m not expecting her to be potty-trained too quickly.  She’s already way ahead of where Hayley was at her age, and Hayley was totally day-trained by 2 1/2.