Liam is 25 months old and 100% day and night potty trained! I wrote about it when we were a few weeks in here, but I thought I’d give a more detailed breakdown of how it happened for us, now that he’s completely trained.

Here’s what we used to get through it:

Baby Bjorn Potty Chair – We bought the baby bjorn potty chair when he was about 17 months old, and he used it once around 18 months, but then didn’t really have an interest. Once we really started training him, he used this chair all the time, but after a while, he started liking the big potty better. Now he’s back to liking the little chair again, which is sometimes nice because he can go number 1 completely by himself, but it’s also gross to deal with it when he goes number 2 in there.

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Justice League underwear – I can’t find a link to the Target brand we used, but we really like this type of underwear, especially because most other brands were too big. Since he started training so young, lots of other underwear just didn’t fit him, so we went we these and they’ve been great. Plus, they’re inexpensive, which is good because we went through a lot each day at the beginning.

Once Liam was staying dry when he was awake, we put away our cloth diapers and switched to pull ups for bedtime and naps. After a couple of weeks, his pull up was consistently dry when he woke up from his naps, so we put him down in underwear, but kept the pull up at night for a couple more weeks. When I was on spring break, and could deal with less sleep and more laundry if necessary, we started putting him down for the night in underwear. He woke up wet a couple of times, but never in the middle of the night. Now, he never wakes up wet!

Method Purpose Natural Cleaning Lavender – I keep a bottle of natural all purpose cleaner in the bathroom now to spray his little potty, especially after he goes number two. I’m not sure when he’ll be ready to use the big potty exclusively, but I look forward to not having to clean the little one anymore.

Toddler Toilet Seat – We don’t have it yet, but I plan on getting a toilet seat like this one to make it easier for Liam to use the big potty by himself. Right now, with just the normal seat, we have to hold him the whole time he’s going.

T I M E L I N E

Week 1: We started on a three day weekend when he had a bad diaper rash. We stayed home most of the time and when we were home, he was without pants and a diaper. He had a few successes and several accidents. We didn’t force him to go in the potty and we didn’t give him extra snacks and liquid, like some potty training methods suggest. We did sometimes reward him with a gummy vitamin for going in the potty, but not every single time.

When our nanny returned on Tuesday, I told her what we had been doing and she agreed to continue. She was a huge help in this whole process. Throughout the week, his accidents became fewer and farther between.

Week 2: I bought him underwear and we started putting him in underwear without pants when we were home. We still put him in diapers when we left the house, but tried to stay home as much as possible. He had more accidents wearing underwear, but soon learned that they weren’t diapers.

Week 3: I ventured out of the house with Liam in underwear on the third weekend. He didn’t have any accidents, but he also wouldn’t go to the bathroom on a public toilet, so I kept our outings short.

Week 4: He finally had some successful public restroom visits, which made me much more confident to leave the house without diapers. At this point, I considered him mostly potty trained, even though he was in a pull up at nap time and at night.

Week 7: He was staying dry during nap time, so we went down to one pull up overnight.

Week 9: Even though he would sometimes wake up in the morning with a wet diaper, we decided to try underwear at night and after a couple of mornings with wet underwear (not in a row, but randomly), he’s now always dry.

Did you conquer potty training naps and nighttime separately?