Potty training

OK, if you don't want to read about poop, go ahead and skip this one...

Last Monday, Margaret pooped on the potty for the second time ever. Hooray!! She had spent the night at her grandparents house and they had talked about how expensive diapers were, so they offered to pay her every time she used the potty. OK, I'll bite. I'm not above bribery at this point, since nothing else I've tried has been very successful. So I told her that if she pooped on the potty, I'd give her five dollars. She was really impressed at that offer, and later that day she pooped! Right after announcing her success with the appropriate celebrating (and the poop dance from Daddy), she proclaimed, "now I can get five dollars!" Only she wants to be paid in quarters. So I raided Wes' quarter stash (it's not as exciting as it sounds) and paid her in quarters and she put it in her piggy bank.

Since then, she's pooped on the potty 3 times, and in her panties 3 times, and in a pull-up 3 times. This is a lot less than she would normally be pooping, but she seems to be doing it at least once every day (she did skip one day). At least she's semi-motivated. I promised to buy her some princess panties if she uses the potty all day long (we'll worry about nighttime later), so when I tell her it's time to use the potty, I remind her of princess panty option when she resists. The $5 per poop option expires on Halloween, so she'll either be using the potty full time by then, or we might end up back in pull-ups. Arg. I guess I could keep it up forever, except that I'd go broke paying for every poop, especially once she gets it. I did get a roll of quarters from the bank yesterday.

I am not feeling terribly confident about today, since we have two activities planned. I want her to wear panties even when we go out, but I'm a little nervous about a day like this when we have an activity planned in the late afternoon, when she usually poops. I guess I'm taking the risk that she'll poop in her panties while we're out and just bring some extra clothes. I'm not the first parent to have this happen, right?

Someday I'll look back on all of this and laugh...