Is That It?

We started showing Elena the potty and how it works about a year ago. We've done spurts of more intense potty teaching (load up on juice and spend the day in the bathroom) every now and again as my moods have shifted around, but never really enforced anything for more than two or three days. This morning, trying to get Elena out of Jonathan's way so he could finish up his paper, I asked her what she wanted to do.

"Go shopping... get panties."

"If we go shopping for panties, sweetheart, Gwamma's going to want to go, too (that's her Gwamma Thing, taking the little girls to buy big-girl panties)."

"And Tita (my mother-in-law) and Tito (my father-in-law) too."

"What about Popa (my dad)?"

"He go inda office."

"OK... You know, if we go buy panties, you'll have to use the potty."

And she did. We broke out the Tropicana Fruit Squeezes (water with just enough juice to make it taste really good) to keep the momentum going and she downed more than one bottle. We had hot dogs and Freezy Beans (still-frozen green beans--she loves them) while watching Cinderella. There was one accident, but she ran to the potty and finished there, without my reminding her. She went six times, in fact. All of those, she recognized ahead of time that she needed to go, and she went. We're going to do this again, tomorrow, and Sunday too, and (hopefully) she'll be in plastic pants for nursury and we can go on our shopping trip on Monday. I know it won't be a total piece of cake, but I'm amazed at what having her make up her mind can do.