My kid is toilet trained

Yep, just like that.

And thanks for the emails on the subject by the way (and apologies for being a CRAP friend and not replying to most of them! Have I mentioned BUSY?!!!)...

If you are not in the least bit interested in the ins and outs of toilet training a toddler child, I suggest you stop reading now. Just feel free to send me congratulatory messages on my exceptional parenting because obviously I did something amazing to achieve this miraculous toileting turnaround. HA HA HA!

For the rest of you, and particularly those who were worried that I might be worried about her lack of progress in this dept.. I think I was in fact most worried that I might be being a bit too slack about the whole thing. Like, she was ready but I wasn't giving her enough opportunity/encouragement, y'know? But then on the other hand, she did seem to have some mortal fear of using the toilet. And that did concern me just a wee bit (pardon the pun).

I can honestly say that my contribution to the toilet-training process has consisted of:

• 1. Bribing her with marshmallows (which didn't work), and
• 2. Forcing her to wee in the toilet on ONE occasion. She cried and it made me feel awful. :( She was sitting on the toilet doing her big "I'm going to wee" thing (pretending) and then she realised that she was actually going to wee. She suddenly got a completely terrified look on her face and said "I'M GOING TO WEE!!!!!" and I kept encouraging her, "yes it's ok, just do a wee. It's ok, etc.." but the poor little poppet looked mortified, much like I imagine I would look if I suddenly had to wee in the middle of a football stadium with 90,000 eyes on me. It was that look of sheer, utter terror. Ultimately she couldn't hold on and she actually did wee, but she cried the whole way through it. I felt like the shittest parent in the world.

  Until it was all done, at which time I clapped, cheered, told her what an amazingly special child she is and gave her THREE marshmallows. It was SO worth it to see how utterly pleased she was with her own effort.

That was a week and a half ago, and after that, I left it alone. I figured now she'd had the chance to realise that weeing in the toilet is not so terrifying, it was up to her to decide when she was up for it. For the next few days, she continued to wear knickers to daycare, but after the first "accident" of the day, she would ask for a nappy. No drama. Then, about four days later - on a Saturday at home - she asked to go to the toilet and she actually went to the toilet!! HALLELUJAH!!!

That was last Saturday. She alternated nappies and knickers for a few days but from about Tuesday she was in knickers full-time. She was still wearing a night-time nappy though...

On Wednesday morning I noticed that when I took off her night nappy, it was completely dry. So the next night, we put her to bed in knickers and she woke up dry. Yippee! And just to prove the point, this morning she woke up at 3.30am from a bad dream and came to bed with us, and while she was tossing and turning trying to get back to sleep, she told us she needs to wee, so Mel took her to the toilet and she did indeed wee. What a bloody marvel, as my Grade One teacher used to say.

And to bring this toilet training ramble to a close, today we did poos in the toilet AND we had several trips out of the house and had to use public toilets, all with no accidents. So I think it is safe to say that we are well and truly Toilet Trained.