My life for the last 4 days has been fixated on bodily functions. Everything swirls around the did-she-or-didn’t-she? question that is always hanging in the back of my head. Internal dialogue: “Has she peed in the last 20 minutes? How much liquid has she drank? What is her demeanor? Is she acting antsy? Why is she being so quiet?” And on and on (and on) it goes.

As I have learned this week, potty training is not one overarching “thing” you do, but rather a series of small modules that create the greater program.

So far, we have encountered:

• peeing during the day
• peeing at night
• pooping during the day
• pooping during the night
• peeing/pooping in a potty other than her own
• being away from the home for extended periods of time
• road trips (shiver)

Each of these is then broken into smaller subcategories such as doing it on her own or being coached.

Like a really bad poker player, Stella has many “tells” that give her away. Learning these tells has been the key to our early successes in this process. Her body language speaks volumes. Whenever she vehemently argues against getting on the potty chair, cries and pitches a fit, it means she REALLY has to go. When you set her on the potty chair and she is antsy and stiffens up she DEFINITELY has to go. When you open the car door to get her out of her carseat and she looks at you and immediately says “My no have to go poop!” you are pretty much guaranteed that – say it with me – SHE REALLY HAS TO GO. It is those times that you ask her if she needs to go potty and she casually responds, “No, not yet” that you can feel pretty confident that she’s telling you the truth. Or those times when she calmly sits there for 15 minutes without releasing a drop, that you know you are wasting your time.

So today, when I went to get her out of the car and she immediately blurts out that she doesn’t have to go poop (knowing full well that she hasn’t gone in over 24 hours), that I bring her in and then plead with her to sit on the potty before taking her nap. The first half hour the air was filled with the desparate, plaintiff cries of “My no have to go poop!” Then, exhausted, I gave up and just had her change into the pull-up and tried putting her down for her nap. 2.2 minutes after closing her bedroom door she emerged proclaiming, “My have to go poop!” So back in the bathroom we go for another hour. My negotiations included everything short of promising her crisp non-sequential bills in a duffel bag, but in the end it all paid off. Somehow, the magical potty fairies came and the skies opened and so did her bowels. All this for poop, people.

More than anything though, we are excited…and proud. She hasn’t peed in her underwear even once since we started (just 4 short days ago), and twice yesterday she made her way in to the bathroom without any prompting at all. This morning, after having her wake up twice in an inexplicably foul mood AND DRY PULL-UP we realized that she has somehow started to hold it, but hasn’t figured out that the uncomfortableness she is feeling is just a full bladder.

I would like to think that from this week on there is no going back. We haven’t used the ‘diaper’ word once since starting this process, and are doing everything within our power to play on Stella’s deeply ingrained sense of routine to make all this work.

Oh, and have I mentioned that we have successfully reduced her bottle consumption down to 2oz per serving?