Real-Life EC: 18th Month

I am thrilled, overjoyed, humbled and amazed... my little dude has been out of diapers for a couple of months now and for this last month - he's 100% done! I would say he's potty-trained, except that we didn't actually have to "potty train" in the common sense. Instead, we worked on it consistently for almost a year and a half and I can comfortably say that we're done! It is crazy how easy it was to "complete EC" once we stopped using diapers altogether. Alek just took the challenge on, I can't even take (much) credit for it.

Toddlers are so capable, this little guy was SO READY to drop diapers at 16 months old

​At the end of May we were having a ton of success while out and about; to this day I don't think we have had even 1 accident in his underwear while out of the house, though a combination of mama-prompting and Alek being really accommodating by pushing out a little pee each time I offered the potty - whether or not he really needed to. At home was a bit of a different story. Some days were dry and other days we had several misses but Alek finally started saying "poop" or "pee" SOMETIMES before going and ALWAYS saying it afterwards (but by then it was too late of course :). I noticed around this time that Alek started holding his pee for longer periods, he also started to occasionally have a little pee spot in his training pants (a pre-pee its called), but would alert me that he needed to go as soon as he felt that tiny bit of wetness.

Look ma, no diaper!

​If you have been following our journey for a couple of months, you will know that I have cleaned out A LOT of poopy training pants... the worst! Even the days when we had no misses for pee, we would always have a couple of poops in his underwear. But by the end of May, more and more poops were getting in the potty instead! He also started to really consolidate his poops so that he was only going once per day instead of 3+ times. One day, about a month ago, Alek was bare-bummed (no idea why, he's nearly always wearing underwear), but anyway I was busy doing something and when I walked past his potty in the living room, it was full of poop! He didn't even tell me. MAJOR proud-mama moment!

As for nighttime, again, its too good to be true! Alek has been dry at night for well over a month now. Even more incredibly, about 5 separate nights he called for me around 11pm so that I could take him to the toilet to pee! The first time it happened it was pretty funny. he was wearing a fitted diaper with no waterproof cover and he woke up, calling my name. I picked him up and began singing to him, pacing the room. He fell back asleep, so I laid him in the crib. He woke again a few minutes later, so I tried the same thing. A third time he woke, I sat down to rock him and he peed on me, straight through the diaper! But, since I felt it right away, I got his diaper off immediately, put a new one on, put on a sleep sac and started rocking him again... only to get peed on again! LOL. I knew I should have put him onto the potty after the first time! 

There are still a couple of accidents here and there, usually before bedtime when he is getting really tired, but 99% of the time he's dry and telling me when he needs to go.

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Spray park in underwear on a warm spring evening. No soggy diapers here!

Based on my previous potty-training journey with my daughter several years ago, I know that there are some challenges that come with completing it "early". Molars, sleep disturbances, nap dropping, growth spurts, and drinking tons of water from your new play teapot can all cause accidents here and there. So although I think I will end the monthly updates in this series here, I may post updates every so often as we continue working on independence since Alek doesn't have all the skills he needs to master it all on his own yet. Things like removing his own pants/underwear and dressing himself, wiping, and washing his hands - his mastering these elements will be key to his on-going success as he passes through the next stages of toddlerhood.