Never underestimate the persistence of a little boy...

You would think in my seven years knowing him I would have learned never to underestimate Ayden by now.  Yet, sometimes I forget and he has to gently remind his Mommy that he can overcome even the milestones that I don't think he's ready for yet.

For this story...let's skip our second.  Issac will be starting school in the fall and for our part we have shied away from night time potty training.  We like our sleep.  A lot.  And dislike washing wet sheets and beds - also a lot.  It was time though, so after Christmas we went cold turkey on night-time pull ups for Issac.  It took about a month, but we made it through without too many emotional scars.  It wasn't long after this Ayden began asking at night "Underwear?  Underwear?".  Despite being fully aware we would have a pee-pee mess in the morning, we allowed it because he asked, you know, with words.  I mean, after waiting so long to hear his voice he pretty much gets what he requests if it is the first time and done with spoken language.  As expected, we did have a clean up job in the morning.  We tried it one more night (again at his request) and the same thing happened so we started a new rule:  stay dry for one night in a diaper and then you can try underwear again.  His persistence has paid off the past few months where putting a pull up on each night has become a fight with tears.  We tried on and off to a dry night here and there but nothing consistent.   Around the beginning of April the before-bed fights escalated into meltdowns and we changed our "rule" to allowing him to try on weekends and as long as he stayed dry he would be allowed to wear underwear the next night.

That was on April 25 - three weeks ago.  He wore underwear on Friday and woke up dry Saturday.  Then Sunday.  Then Monday.  On Tuesday - we had an accident.  I made a split decision that night to let him try one more night and it paid off.  We made it another 5 days dry at night.  Three weeks later we have a total of three accidents since we started.  He isn't fully trained yet, but he will not be returning to pull ups.

I still cannot wrap my head around how big of an accomplishment this one is - and it is ALL Ayden.  We would not have started so soon with him if he hadn't asked.  If HE hadn't been so persistent we would not have continued.  This is without a doubt one of his biggest accomplishments to me and I am so very proud of him.