Underwear

The short version: Nicholas has been wearing underwear since about 4:30 this afternoon (about 4 1/2 hours) and has successfully used the potty 4 or 5 times and had 1 minor accident.  He is now in bed in underwear and although I'm pretty certain this will mean I'm washing sheets in the morning, I'm not about to fight him on this since he insisted he "doesn't need diapers anymore."
The longer version:
As you may remember, after a lot of success on potty training in January, he just decided in late Jan or early Feb that he was not going to use the potty anymore.  Once we realized he was adamant on this fact and had enough control to ensure that he wasn't successful even by accident, we dropped the fight.  Since then we have left it at occassionally asking if he was interested and reminding him that he couldn't wear his Mickey Mouse underwear until he used the potty all the time.

This afternoon when we were showering post-pool he had to pee and knows he can't do that in the shower, so successfully used the potty.  I praised him and reminded him that if he started doing that all the time he'd get to wear his Mickey Mouse underwear.  Then he shocked me by declaring that he wanted to start wearing them NOW and he promised he'd use the potty from now on.  Sure, why not?  Clearly holding them out as a reward after proving success wasn't working, so let's try this. 

And he is SO excited! I'm a little worried because he wants to show off his underwear all the time (complete with a "ta da" as he pulls down his pants), which should be interesting in church tomorrow morning.  I am also pretty certain that this whole skipping stages things will end up with lots of laundry (gah--coin operated machines) and carpet cleaning for me (stupid wall to wall cream carpet!).  But, maybe just maybe it will be what he needs to make the leap.

Then again, the novelty of the underwear may wear off by tomorrow morning and we'll be back to square one.  We'll see.

From 2012 July