"They Melt in Your Mouth...."

...and Not in Your Hand" that is the slogan/song for M&M's as I remember from a long time ago. But I am not so sure I believe that as evidenced by one little girl.

Taryn's Blue M&M Face

So here is the rest of the story:

We started potty training Taryn on Sunday. It was a decision that I have been teeter tottering w/for a while, partly because she didn't seem overly ready and everything is so up in the air for us right now w/a lot of transition coming. But she was consistently showing more and more signs of readiness and we have another month before we are going to be moving and Chad is around a lot right now to help so we decided we would give it a whirl just to see what would happen. Our plan going in was to give it a week to see what would happen. If she showed little to no interest or readiness we would happily go back to diapers and re-attack in a few months. We just took away her diapers and put her in training pants and then just watched to see how it would all go. Much to my surprise Taryn showed progress almost immediately. She went from having no awareness of when she peed in her diaper to complete awareness when she peed in her training pants and not liking it much at all. In just a few days she now consistently tells us when she has to go potty, she shows great control and accidents are getting fewer and further between. She is waking up dry from her nap and not completely dry in the morning but not nearly as soaked as she has been normally. So I guess we are officially training now, and hope to have her fully trained in a few weeks. I am really proud of her, she is doing so great.

So what does any of this have to do w/M&M's. To add an extra incentive and reinforce our training efforts I took advice of many mom's before me...M&M's....ahhh the magic of chocolate. Taryn gets 3 M&M's every time she successfully does her business in the potty. At first she wasn't so certain about them as she has never had them before but w/a little coaxing she cautiously took her first bite and her response "mmmmmmmmmmmm" LOL. The funny thing is she normally shoves food by the handful into her mouth but the M&M's are savored and ate very slowly one by one. Maybe she is just trying to make sure her brother recognizes that she got something that he didn't :-). Poor Evan feels so left out, but we keep telling him he too can have M&M's when he goes pee pee in the potty. So far he has showed little interest but that is OK w/me, training one at a time is enough of a challenge for me. ONce we get Taryn squared away if Evan decides he wants to try great, if not we will hold off until he is ready.