Potty Training week one

Well, we are coming up on about one week of potty training. It has been interesting to find what is working for us and what doesn't. You may recall my previous posts about this with some pretty decent venting going on in the first. LJ wants to train, but at the same time he seems fine to not train. This brought me to the point of no more diapers and we are not going back. I actually packed up his sized diapers the other day and made all of the one size diapers so they will fit Baby C.
We have a pack of the disposable training pants, but really they are too much like diapers for LJ. He doesn't mind wearing them, but he will never say he needs to go to the potty while in them because he doesn't feel the need. I use these only if we are going out for a long trip or if I run out of clean underwear or training pants.
So, what has been working for us? I found the best way to get successes with LJ is to keep him naked from the waist down for as long as I can (he really likes to have his big boy underwear on). We also now use food coloring. Yes, food coloring. On Monday LJ said he wanted blue water in the potty and that he would sit on the big bathroom potty if it had blue or green water. So, I used some of our toilet cleaner to make some green water (hey I got to clean the toilet afterward as well since he didn't actually go that time). LJ also wanted the colored water down in his training potty. That is when I knew I needed food coloring. I made some blue water for his potty, but quickly realized it made it really to tell if he had actually done anything. LJ likes to say "yay! Poopies in the potty!" after like every time he sits down. If we ask him if he peed, he will say yes, even if he did not.
So, how did I fix that issue and still give him the colored water? When we clean out the potty from a success, we put in a drop of food color. This way when he pees he is making colored water. He loves it and we know when he successful and wen he is not. It becomes very easy to see pee in a potty when it is colored blue or purple (he now likes us to put in red and blue). I am just loving that he is excited to sit on the potty. We have had to go out and get two new race cars already.
We made the deal with LJ that for each row of his potty chart that he filled up (it has 7 boxes per row) we would go to the store and he could pick out a new toy. We were going to take him to the dollar store, but when we had to shop at walmart first for a few things and saw they had matchbox cars for 98 cents, that became our place to go. He loves being able to pick out a new race car and take it home. We love that it means he has gone to the potty 7 times successfully. This newest race car was bought after only two days. I thought that was awesome.
Tuesday and Wednesday were more difficult for full training as I had a doctor's appt and he had play group. That meant longer trips from home and throw-away pull ups. Wednesday we didn't have any successful times on the potty except for one time that he left maybe two drops right before bed time. Today he has already had two successful times on the potty and we have gone through about four pairs of underwear. It seems like as soon as they are on him, he doesn't think about what his body is saying and he starts to go without going to the potty first. I know that will get better as time goes on, but for now, naked is the way to go. :)

Until next time... Happy Training!