Potty Potty Potty

I don't know if it's because of Christmas or what, but Celeste has taken about eight steps backwards with potty training. Before we left (and, yes, I am still needing to recap the holidays — we went to Louisiana, there's lots to blog), Celeste was doing quite well. She'd been wearing Hello Kitty underwear throughout the day without an accident for a week or two; she was even waking up from her nap with a dry diap and she stayed dry overnight a few times.

The first day in Louisiana, she had a few accidents, but otherwise she was more good than not. There was some resistance to using the portable potty seat we'd brought, but, for the most part, she did fine.

Since we've been back home, however, things have been less than fine. Our first night back, before her bath, she fought getting on to the potty until I suggested she use her stepstool to climb up by herself. "That feels right," she said. Unfortunately, that seems to have been the high point.

This afternoon alone, she had three accidents ... and none of them actually seemed to be accidents. She did fine holding things while we were out at the grocery store for over an hour, but as soon as we got home, it was time to mop up the floor again. Evelin thinks it's just readjusting to home, but the willfulness of it makes me worry Celeste is trying to assert herself in some way.

So now we're trying to figure out what sort of reward/bribe/incentive/disincentive we need to give Celeste to help get her back on track and using the potty all the time. Food/sweets as a reward seems like a bad idea for the long term. Evelin was thinking about offering Celeste the chance to watch Sesame Street the following morning if she stays dry all day. We also talked about letting her have 15 minutes of "Cookie Eats Letter ..." on PBS Kids. The PBS Kids option feels best to me, but I'm not sure.

The only thing we've settled upon is that if Celeste wets her pants, she doesn't get to spend any time "nakie" — it's pretty much straight out of the wet clothes to the potty and then in to clean clothes. Beyond this, I'm just hopin' Evelin is right and Celeste gets back into a groove quickly ...