I'm a big girl now

Over the holidays we started actual potty training with Maddy. She's used the potty/toilet for pees and poops since she was six months old, so our hurdle wasn't to get her to go there, but too have her gain more control. Before we left for Revelstoke we started talking more about how mom and dad use the toilet. We would make a big deal when we had the urge to go and say that we had that "special feeling" and needed to go to the toilet.

In Revelstoke we put on her underwear and told her to tell us when she had the special feeling and we'd take her to the potty. The first day, there was peeing all over the place but she soon learned and so did we (to take her there more often). In the beginning she would do this whole routine and if we did anything to ruin the routine she wouldn't want to use the potty. The routine went something like this:

1. Mama goes in the bathroom. Maddy stays in the hall, closes the door and says "Knock, knock, who's there? Mama's there!" before she came in the bathroom.
2. Once inside, she painstakingly pulled down her underwear, insisting they come all the way off. (A few times she crashed her head on the floor because she lost her balance while trying to get the undies off!)
3. Next she'd go and step on the scale and exclaim, "I'm healthy!"
4. Finally, she'd go and sit on the potty, where she'd sit and sit and sit.

She's come a long way since. Now that we are back at home, the routine is getting better. She can pull her underwear down quickly (leaves them by her ankles), shimmies over to the potty, sits down and does her business. She can also move the bench over to the sink, climb on, wash and dry her hands and move the bench back all by herself. We've had to reward her with one raisin if she puts pee or poop in the potty now. It helps with motivation to leave whatever she's doing to go try and it also makes her come off the potty faster.

So far, so good. All I can say is that I'm SOOOOO glad we don't have carpet and those prefold cloth diapers are super handy for cleaning up accidents!!