It started on a Saturday, with the promise of M&M’s.

We put underwear on Ethan when he got ready for the day in the morning and then he needed to pee off the back of the boat with his big brothers. Thankfully, this kid likes to drink his calories, so his little body is always flushing fluids through and peeing comes naturally to him. Practice, practice, practice!

We had been doing lots of talking about no more diapers and diapers being for baby Raylan, my little nephew, but Ethan kept saying no, no, no. We didn’t want this to become a power struggle so we kind of let it slide, but then the diaper supply on board started to get low. We were down to one bag of no-names we had purchased in Key Largo yet and a package of Huggies with a few bedtime pull-ups we had brought from home. We were anchored out, so peeing off the boat was perfect and James and Matthew sure get a kick out of doing it, so we encouraged Ethan as well. We promised a candy treat, which he bargained into two M&M’s, so we stopped putting diapers on and started putting underwear on.

Now, the sight of that half naked monkey running around in little briefs is so cute. Matthew gave him lots of encouragement and admired his new big boy underwear. Ethan got the hang of it pretty quick and so he yells at us when it’s time to pee and he sits on the potty on Viatori and we talk about his or he goes off the back of a boat when we are visiting or pees into the shallow water when we are at the beach.

Ethan all done on the toilet.

We have had a few accidents and he hasn’t quite caught on to doing a number two in the potty yet. I caught him before the act one morning and managed to get him on the toilet in time, but otherwise he is doing great and seems pretty pleased with himself. He drinks a lot of water before bed and sometimes during the night, so he still wears a diaper for bedtime, but otherwise it is underwear or swimming trunks during the day.  The last few nights have been going great, as he goes pee before saying good night and then again first thing in the morning when his diaper comes off.  We have actually had some dry diapers come morning time!

I was hoping this potty training thing would be a little easier on the boat. No carpet so no messy clean-ups, minimal clothing so less laundry and lots of fun/non-traditional places to pee!

Sitting on the potty!

Yahoo! The young lad, as my dad likes to call him, is potty trained! Gotta love it!

L

Update as of today:  Ethan is completely dry at night and poops and pees on the potty without the promise of a treat anymore!  He actually wakes up during the night to use the toilet which means I get to stumble around in the dark to help him, but that is fine with me.  No more diapers!