Potty Training

Well we finally pulled the trigger and decided to potty train Leona. Bonnie, Grandma Cole's dog, kindly gave Leona some Anna and Elsa undies for Christmas. Since Collin had a long Christmas vacation we decided to do it while he could help, after all he's gotten off pretty easy with the first two.  Leona picked out some prizes from the dollar bin at Target: socks with donuts on them, a light up wand, a stuffed pink and purple hedgehog, etc.  She actually did a pretty good job catching on, only a few accidents. However Leona did not want to poop in the toilet and followed the example of her biggest sister in simply holding it in for excessive amounts of time.  Since I'm writing this so late I've blocked out exactly how long she held it for but it was around a week give or take a couple of days.  Enter the Firefighter Barbie. this was Leona's main bribe to  poop in the toilet.  After much blood, sweat, and tears on my part... and hers too... she finally earned that Barbie and could not have been happier about it. She told everyone we spoke with that she got a "fighterfighter Barbie for putting poops in the big girl toilet." The most comic part of the potty training process was carrying around the "emergency potty".

We had to carry this guy around everywhere for weeks.  Leona stubbornly refused to use a standard toilet so for about a month we carried this as well as a baggie of Lysol wipes around everywhere we went, including but limited to, into Sacrament meeting.  Don't panic though, we always used it in an actual bathroom stall. We got lots of amused looks from the old people we walked past as we left Sacrament meeting toting the potty.