1Mar2009: Day 279: Sticker Chart - Help or Headache?

When we got home yesterday, I decided to go ahead and use the sticker chart to get Makenna sitting longer on the potty. I hung the chart that we got with the training potty (which we don’t use,) on the wall in the bathroom next to the toilet that we put the potty seat on. I told her that if she sat down on the seat that she could then put a sticker on the chart and two stickers if she actually went pee.

She enthusiastically obliged and sat on the toilet for about five – six seconds. After putting her back into a diaper, I then gave her a sticker to put on the chart. She was really happy to do this. I had a fear that she would give me a hard time and want another sticker, and sure enough, I was right. I told her that we just went potty and that we’ll try again in the morning and put on another one. She then screamed “sticker!” Yup, just as I figured, she’d insist that she had to have another sticker and scream to get her way. We didn’t let her get her way obviously, but hopefully we don’t have to go through this every time.

This morning when I got her up we went back into the bathroom and repeated the procedure. We then repeated it again before her bath, and before nap and tonight before bed. She calmed down about the sticker and she even started to try and wipe herself the last two times. We haven’t peed in the toilet yet but I hope we’ll get there eventually. She is sitting longer and longer as I take my time in getting the diaper or something to stall her and have her sit on it longer. This whole screaming about the sticker is what I also fear if I resort to candy. I think she’ll “freak” out if I don’t give her candy whether she pees or not. So what I’m thinking is stick with the idea of giving her two stickers if she does successfully go and when we move onto part II (poop) then we’ll get into the candy. I’m going to try and get different stickers for when she does go pee.

I wanted to add a few comments about yesterday’s trip to the castle. I loved the smell that permeated through the rooms of a fire burning. It again reminds me of being up at the cottage back in the states when it was cold mornings and my grandparents would start a fire in the wood stove. I wish I could’ve taken pictures of the some of the rooms as they were just amazing to look at. One of the rooms had hand-painted wall-paper and the room that had a lot of paintings, also had these chairs that have really ornate carved wood arms and legs. The tour guide said that the reason the arms were so ornately carved was that these chairs were used in the Vatican waiting room and this way people wouldn’t fall asleep waiting to see the Pope.

I also wanted to add this video at the end (sorry about the sideways video) from Friday of Hannah singing to “Balamory” which is a show over here for the kids. There’s a lot of other back ground noise too but if you listen closely you can here her singing. It’s really cute, this girl is always singing. The second video is of her and Makenna sitting together watching “Balamory” and you can hear Hannah say “wakka” which is how she says Makenna, but I really wanted to add it so you can here Hannah’s accent. I love listening to her talk just to hear this cute little accent come out of her mouth.