Operation Potty...In progress?

With a week off for the holidays, I decided to give toilet training a shot.

We introduced the potty chairs months ago, allowing Cassidy to sit on them whenever she wanted, either with or without diaper, and encouraged her whenever she was interested. We only had a couple of times where she actually deposited anything into them, and celebrated excessively each time.

So on tuesday morning, we stripped her down to only a shirt and told her that her peepee and poopoo belonged in the potty. We started out just grand!!

Day 1:

After beginning to pee on the floor several times and cutting herself off mid stream, Cassidy finally ran to the potty chair and made all of her pee into the potty!

We continued with NO accidents and 3 successful pees in the potty for the day!

Day 2:

The success continued ...

We started the day with a successful poop right in the potty chair completely initiated by Cassidy.

2 successful pees in the potty.

1 accident while eating dinner.

1 accident during time out for hitting mommy.

Day 3 (that's today):

Our success completely disintegrated.

Cassidy had absolutely zero interest in even sitting on the potty. Not only is she uninterested, she's defiant and refuses to sit on the potty.

She peed on the floor 3 times, completely emptying her bladder before saying, "Oh NO!" and then running to the potty tracking pee footprints all the way there, only to sit down for about 2 seconds and then pop back up again.

We managed to put 1/2 of her poop in the potty only because I scooped her up mid-squeeze and rushed her there with her whining "NO" the entire way and then holding her on the potty chair while she continued pushing the poop out and whining "NO".

We followed this up with her peeing on the floor during her time-out for biting daddy.

Hmmmph.

I expected this on day 1 or 2, but not after two REALLY successful days! I also expected accidents, but not outright defiance.

So what do I do???? Do we continue with this tomorrow, or decide she's not "ready" and call it quits? Do I chalk it up to a bad day or do we wait until she's in a more cooperative phase? Part of my frustration is that I go back to work on Monday, and daycare doesn't potty train. She needs to be well on her way before leaving diapers, and if she has 2 or 3 accidents in a day, she goes back into diapers. When I asked the daycare workers what they recommend a month or two ago, their only words of wisdom were, "she'll do it when she's ready."

What does that mean!?!

This is learned skill isn't it? Not something she's inately born with and suddenly will reach the milestone whenever she's "ready"? If I was at home with her, I'd just work on it continuously. But I've read that the worst thing you can do is start and stop and do it half way.

So can we do diapers at daycare and just work on it evenings and weekends?

Will that make it harder?

So all of my mommy friends out there .... If you have any words of wisdom on what worked for you, or what you would do, I'd greatly appreciate it! I'm so frustrated, not with Cassidy, but because I don't know how to handle this!

Send me an email. Send me a text. Leave a comment on here.

Please.