Oh dread, Part 1

We decided to toilet train Molly.  It is not going very well and is extremely frustrating.  You can stop reading there or if you would like to continue reading and comment with suggestions, I am open for any.  I probably shouldn't post stuff like this, but I am so frustrated that perhaps writing it down will help me re-evaluate what we are doing.

I read a ton online before beginning and I've read a ton more in the few moments I've had to spare during the last 2 days.  I thought I was prepared, that Molly was ready, and that things would go fairly smoothly.  Boy, was I ever wrong.

We've tried stickers, coloring, swedish fish rewards, reading books, dancing, singing songs, playing on the ipod, squirting water with a water bottle, blowing out matches, sucking on a binker with a blanket cape around her shoulder, setting the timer and "trying" every time it went off, and even shaking maracas while singing, "Molly pee-pees in the toilet, then we go outside . . ."

What's the problem?  She won't go.

Yesterday we earned 2 stickers on the sticker chart.  One was a for a few dribbles and the other was when she just couldn't hold it any longer.  We also had a few accidents.  Today we doubled that and earned 4 stickers on the sticker chart.  We had no accidents after around 8:30 this morning.  She started out more than happy to cooperate, sit on the toilet, and do all the fun things mentioned above . . .  until she actually needed to go.  She doesn't want anything to do with the toilet at that point and we end up with a screaming, overly dramatic 2 year old, crying and snotting herself into ridculousness while mom ends up holding her legs down until she finally lets go.  Once it its all done, she says, "I did it," gets a glimmer of excitement, and mom dances around like a crazy person to try to show her how cool that just was.

Unfortunately as the day wore on, the willingness to try and the fun stuff wore off.  We were in a major power struggle and sitting on the toilet was becoming a nightmare.  After many tears and gaseous sounds and smells from the 2 year old, I realized that perhaps the problem with the #1 was that a #2 was necessary as well.  We focused on that for a while and changed the lyrics to our maraca song.  It just got worse . . . we quit.  I failed.  We put a diaper on.

After about 2 hours, Molly finally relaxed, played around for a while, did her business, and quickly came and told me.  We took care of the diaper and put the big girl pants back on.  At first I asked her, "Do you want a diaper back on or big girl pants?"  She said,"put diaper on."  I said, "no. you'll wear big girl pants."   I was ready to give up completely, but then had the thought that since the #2 was taken care of momentarily, tomorrow might end up being more successful with #1.  She didn't argue and is wearing the big girl pants again.

She's asleep now.  She'll likely wake up dry (or to be cautious, I will wake her up before she has a chance to chill on her bed), which she has done for months.  In the morning we'll start again.

My mom and my sister are probably sick of me calling them and asking for help.  It has pretty much been the longest and most stressful 2 days of my life up to this point.  Big sigh.  I'm serious.  I thought I knew was stress and frustration were.  Wish us luck tomorrow.