A glimmer of hope

Well, I've been trying to take Alaina a little more often lately and I've actually been mostly working on getting her to sit on the potty by herself. She didn't like it at first since she was used to me holding her over it, but now she sits on it and claps for herself and says, "Yay!!" So that's some good progress. Being happy to sit on the potty is the first step.

Today I decided to give her some diaper-free time so she's been toddling around the room half-naked. She peed in her little rocking chair and immediately got up and looked at it like, "Hey, what?" and she was pretty upset when I took the cover off the chair to be washed. So that made me decide that I need to do more diaper free time with her so that she can see what's happening when she goes and relearn to associate the feeling with the result. Then later, she was in a diaper and started to poop. I interrupted her to try to get her to finish on the potty, but she wouldn't go. She's been naked ever since and still hasn't tried to finish. Weird kid.

But the thing that makes me kinda happy is that when she sits on the potty, she makes the peeing cue sound that I've used with her. So maybe there's still something there? She'll also sign "potty" when she hears the word or sometimes after she goes. So it seems like we have a lot of good foundations and now we just need one or two successes and I think it will click for her. I think if I could just catch her at the right time once or twice she'd go, "Oh! That's what you want me to do! Now I get it!" I think that the recognition for the need to go is still there to a degree and I'm hopeful that it would all come together quickly after she put together the objective.

At any rate, even if this project doesn't work with her, at least she's shown me that it CAN work if I'm diligent, especially at the right times. I guess that's why I want to try it again with the next baby even though this hasn't panned out quite as perfectly as I'd hoped. It's been such a more peaceful road for me than the regular thing.