Our house for the last few days has been turned into a War Zone. Fresh underwear (and reading material) stacked in the bathrooms. Clorox wipes on the backs of the toilet. Rugs rolled up and out of the way. Couches covered in towels. Everyone’s nerves on edge just a bit, waiting for the inevitable. It all began on Thursday night, when Caroline ripped off her diaper at bath time and announced, “NO MORE DIAPERS. ONLY UNDIES!” Well okay then. I was surprised she even knew what undies were since the only time she ever saw the Elmo undies I had slipped into her drawer was once when she was searching for her cappi. But the sentiment was the same on Friday morning when I put her (begrudgingly) in a diaper and sent her off to preschool. MOMMY I TOLD YOU NO DIAPERS!

I knew this would have to be THE weekend. Strike while the iron’s hot and all that jazz. I was pumping myself up all day Friday. You can do this, you can DO this, you CAN do THIS! Deep yoga breathing. Stretching. I felt like I was going into battle.

We prepped with supplies. We had about 28 pairs of Elmo undies. Elmo is literally the only character she knows, unless you count Mickey Mouse (which she thinks is a character on the frozen waffles box thanks to her cousin Preston).

The bathroom was prepped:

I even kicked off the night before with some wine, knowing I was in for a loooong weekend:

Mike prepped the living room:

Even Pooh wasn’t safe on the floor. He was moved to higher ground.

Saturday morning, Mike and I walked into Caroline’s room and announced NO MORE DIAPERS, only undies! She was on board and pumped. Especially when she heard that going potty meant getting cookies. Cookies are Caroline’s Love Language. So we slipped her into the first pair of undies and waited and waited. She eventually yelled out POTTY! And we all ran. And I mean ALL of us. Mike, me, Caroline, and Finny. We all surrounded the tiny green chair and heard a tiny waterfall and whooped and cheered. It was wonderful. (Note: the rest of the weekend was not so magical. We thought for 4 seconds that this was it and now she was trained. Oh silly first timers!)

It was so strange seeing her in undies for the first time!

The plan we followed was the 3 day bootcamp method where you put them in a t-shirt and undies and mention VERY often “tell mommy if you have to go, okay?” You load them up with fluids and hope they will learn when they have to go. You heap praise (and in our case, COOKIES!) on them when they do well. We loaded her up with 10000 juice boxes to give lots of opportunities to have to go. I learned this weekend that my daughter most closely resembles a camel.

And all in all, Caroline did really well! We watched her like a hawk, especially on Days 1-2. We even set up Shopping Store so she could play on the main level:

She gave Finny some love, and Baby Vivi too! They were so cute together on the couch but the whole time you’re thinking PLEASE DONT GO, PLEASE DONT GO…

She helped clean up some of the (ahem) messes she helped make 😉

And at the end of 3 days, we welcomed this little lady to the undies-only club!

Nice job, Sugar Bear! Keep up the good work!