Bed Transition and Potty Training (EEEEEK!)

After getting home from all of our holiday travels, I had a lot of organizing to do in our small house to find a place for all of our new things . . . especially in the kids' rooms. Chris and I had both felt for a few months that Brenson was ready to transition out of his crib, but we decided to wait until the new year to do it. Since we were already rearranging Bren's room to fit his workbench, we decided it would be a good time to transition him to a toddler bed as well. 

January 6th was the first night that Bren slept in his toddler bed (which is just his crib with one side removed), so he was about a month shy of 2 years old. He hadn't climbed out of his crib, but he is so tall that I was afraid he would try and injure himself in the process. Plus, we just felt like he was ready.

Here is a photo looking into his newly rearranged bedroom:

We moved his bookshelf to make room for the workbench.

Here is Brenson proudly standing next to his workbench. It fits perfectly in this spot!

He was fascinated while Daddy was taking the side off of his crib, and couldn't wait to climb in his bed by himself.

We had a long talk with him about not getting out of his bed by himself, and told him that we trusted him to be a big boy and stay in bed.

He was SO proud to be in a "big" bed!

The first night he did better than we expected. He never got out of bed, and he didn't fall out of bed either. Now, he has fallen out of bed a few times since, maybe 4 or 5? And he did get out of bed once on the third night in his toddler bed. We scolded him pretty badly, put him back in bed, and reminded him that he was not to get out of bed by himself. He hasn't gotten out since! He is sensitive to verbal scolding (unlike his sister), so we never had to do anything else. At first, we reminded him every night as we were putting him down that he was not to get out of bed. Then, he started saying it before we had the chance. He'd say, "Bed out no" while shaking his head no. We no longer have to talk about it at all as he knows that he has to stay in bed.

When he's ready to get up in the morning or after nap, he calls for us and will wait until we come in the room to get him. Recently, he has started saying, "Done! I'm done! Alllll done!" when he wakes up. The other day, he randomly did this at 3am??? SO strange from our great sleeper, and it made us laugh! We just told him that it was still night time, and he went back to sleep. He's also started wanting to get out of bed by himself in the past week or so, but he will wait until we come in the room and let him know that it's okay.

Okay, on to the next big transition. It's something that I was needlessly nervous about . . . potty training!

I mentioned back in Brenson's 18 month post that we had started potty training, but I've never followed up on it. Since this is a post about transitions, I thought I'd go ahead and update on his potty training progress here.

Back when Brenson was 10 months old, we began putting him on the potty before his bathtime. This is the same "pre-training" method that we used with Brianna, and we had high hopes that it would work as well the second time around. If you're interested in our potty training process with Brianna, click here. With Brianna, it didn't take long for her to coincidentally go on the potty before bathtime, but it took her months to learn to go on purpose. Brenson was completely different. He didn't go for the first time for about 4 months (so he was about 14 months old), but he very quickly learned how to purposely go and did it every. single. time we put him on the potty.

He also started showing interest in wanting to use the potty during other times besides bathtime MUCH earlier than Brianna did. I credit this to having an older sister that uses the potty :-). He was 17 months old when he started wanting to use the potty all the time, so we decided to take advantage of the opportunity and potty train!

This photo is of the first day that Brenson wore undies . . . August 2, 2013.

Not surprisingly, Bren caught on very quickly and had few accidents from day one. I'm not patting myself on the back here at all! I really had very little to do with it . . . he was interested and motivated and all I did was take advantage of the opportunity! I would set the timer during the day to go off every 30 minutes, and he would go potty pretty much every time I took him. The biggest problem we had was him spraying everywhere. We use a potty seat that sits on our toilet, but it came clear very quickly that we needed something with that little shield on it to keep him from peeing everywhere all the time. So, we bought this:

It definitely helped him not spray and make a mess! We had to make sure that he was situated just right on the seat. Now Bren knows to point it down and will take care of that himself. Boys are so complicated in that way :-)!

For several months after we trained Brenson, we would still put him in a diaper when we left the house. It's SUCH a pain to take a child potty constantly in public, but we mainly did this because many of the places we go regularly are a bit of a drive. However, we bit the bullet and stopped putting Bren in a diaper during any time he's awake at the beginning of January (so about a month before he turned 2). He's had no problems! I should have taken the plunge months earlier, but I lacked confidence. He doesn't use any kind of potty seat when we're away from home which is also different than his sister. With Brianna, we carried a portable potty seat in the diaper bag (Brenson was a newborn when she was newly trained), and she wouldn't go without the seat. For him, the portable seat is a distraction and we discovered early on that he won't go with the seat. They have to keep me on my toes, ha! I hated hauling that foldable seat around, so I like it better this way for sure!

He does wear a diaper for nap and nighttime. He has recently began fussing about his naptime diaper and saying, "No . . .me unnerwear, unnerwear" meaning that he wants to nap in his underwear, but he doesn't wake up dry regularly at all yet. I doubt it will be long, though.

I try not to take pics of the kids in their underwear, but I did find a few recent ones of Brenson.

He LOVES wearing a hat and shoes. He's indifferent about other clothing items.

He was jumping over Brianna's baby doll from the stool! He's SUCH a BOY!

Overall, the bed transition and potty training have both been very easy with Brenson. And yes, I know how fortunate we are! People are generally pretty surprised when they find out he trained before two years old, but I think our pre-training method makes a HUGE difference. Because of the pre-training, the potty is part of our routine and that just makes the full transition so much smoother.