And the journey begins...

I have just finished prepping my main floor (the only floor in my house with all wood or tile) for our first day of potty training tomorrow. All my rugs are up. The potty is in the corner. My kitchen table is against the wall to give us more play room (amazing how much extra space that gives us). The newly upholstered kitchen chairs that he so loves to climb on are in the living room. The baby gate is ready to go up in the hallway so he can't get to the living room because I didn't want to take up that rug or worry about my furniture. All his board books and wood or easily cleanable toys are within very easy access (thank you, Santa!). I have my bottle of Green Works and cleaning cloths handy, too. The house is ready. Am I?

All day, I've been thinking to myself: am I crazy?! And no, I know I'm not. But right now, the eve of the first training day, I'm a little nervous. There are no books out there to practically tell you how this is supposed to go because it seems like no one does it any more. All I have is word of mouth accounts, and older people encouraging me by telling me that they all had their kids trained early. Yes, I know it's possible, but it's not much help when I have questions like "Do I leave him in underwear or with nothing?"

So here is the plan. And as we parents know, even the best laid plans are sometimes futile. I want to have him get used to the underwear, so I'm going to have him wear them unless we're in the 'sitting on the potty every 10 minutes because he hasn't gone in over an hour' stage. He doesn't like things around his ankles when he's sitting anyways. But, once he goes pee, I'm going to put the underwear on, I think, and then we'll just play by the potty for 45 minutes until I have him sit down again. I'm not going to pump him with salt so he drinks more, but I'll tell ya what...he will be drinking more than normal I'm sure.

Hopefully by this time tomorrow (at which point I hope to update again on how we did) I will still have hair. I know in my head that this will all be fine, but right now, I'm just wondering how I'll get to the end. When I swam competitively, my favorite race was the mile. Crazy, I know, but I loved the even strokes, the rhythm, watching the bubbles fly off my hand, the turn, the push, the glide, the first big gulp of air. I feel like I'm on the starting block and tomorrow's alarm will be the gun to get me in the water. There's no turning back. I have to just keep pushing through. Even when my lungs start to burn and my legs feel like Jello, I just have to keep kicking and pulling. Or, for our current situation, even when I've cleaned pee off the floor a dozen times, and I haven't seen anything by the 4 walls in my house for 6 days, and we're still having more accidents than successes...I have to keep being encouraging. Keep smiling. And eventually, Lord willing, he'll get it.

So until tomorrow...