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Home of the Big Candy

Age of potty warrior: 2 years, 11 months

Date of initial potty training: Memorial Day Weekend, 2007

Since the last chapter of The Potty Diaries, we've continued to offer "Big Candy" as a reward for staying dry after naps and overnights. Big candy is code for fun-size Halloween-style candy treats as opposed to the original and still going strong Pee Pee Candy, M&Ms. The tantalizing Big Candy reward had helped convince Jolie that, indeed, settling down to try and nap was a good idea since she could possibly get a Big Candy. (This was reinforced by the very occasional bum nap, in which she never actually went to sleep during the nap period and ending up dry.) We would say this never expecting that she might actually wake-up dry since it just never happened.

"Pee pee's going to come back! Better go to sleep now!" we would say.

"Oh," she would say seriously, and climb into bed.

But, recently, she's actually done it. We're probably up to 30% of naps and 20% of overnights, she will wake-up dry. She claims to be dry 80-90% of the time though. Wishful thinking. Yet, the glory and joy of earning a Big Candy lights up her face. We hand over the Elmo basket full of the reward and she gets to pick one to feast on.

It's getting to be more and more common for her to earn a Big Candy, that I'm starting to sweat the fact that she's now actually consuming all of this extra candy. Doh!

Maybe we'll start filling the basket with some other less-chocolate-and-less-fat containing candies and maybe putting some stickers or other small non-edible treasures inside (although I'm pretty sure the chocolate fun-size candies will still be number 1 with her).

As a motivator, candy definitely works, but weaning might be an issue.

***

The Potty Diaries Series

Ch4: The insurgency that won't die

Ch 3: Steady State

Ch 2: Guerilla Warfare

Ch 1: Mission Aborted

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