It's my potty and I'll cry if I want to

I have the cutest kid ever. Seriously. I mean look at this boyish face. How could you not love that?
He's such a blast. And I'm so thankful for him. Next to Todd, he's the biggest blessing in my life and he has forever changed my outlook on what having boys would even look like. I never saw myself as a "boy mom" until he came into my life. Now, it seems like a role I was just born to play.

As we headed into the weekend of potty training, I tried to be as positive and optimistic about this situation as possible. We had a super fun day on Friday since we would be staying in all day Saturday and Sunday.
I decorated the bathroom so he would wake up to awesomeness and be so excited to use the potty that he would never want to go in a diaper ever again. I rocked the bathroom out with streamers and balloons.
And I did decorate with underwear. Elmo underwear. Buzz Lightyear underwear. Dinosaur underwear. Every kind of underwear any little boy could imagine or hope for.
We got new books and cars and the best Elmo potty around. It said encouraging things like "Good job!" and "You're grown up just like Elmo!"
We stocked up on stickers and M&M's - the rewards for actually going in the potty. (And if anyone says anything negative about the M&M's being a reward I might punch you in the face because I'm a little on edge right now. Or I could just nicely say "Please keep those comments to yourself." Just go for which ever version speaks most to you should you feel inclined to lecture me about treats for potty training.) Either way, we have M&M's and stickers. It's how we're doing it.
And then the weekend happened. And wow. Just wow.

I actually found myself missing 3:00am feedings. Seriously, if I ever have another child and I'm up in the middle of the night when I'd rather be sleeping, I will seriously remember this weekend and remind myself, that there will be worse days.

In all fairness to Tommy, it wasn't that bad. He's getting the hang of it. But there were lots of accidents, lots of tantrums, lots of trying our patience and testing us too. It felt really hard for me to keep making him go because he would just cry and cry and staying cheery and happy for him is SO hard when I just wanted to cry myself.

If the bathroom looks like this, you can imagine Todd and I. We went to the grocery store tonight after he went to bed thanks to the in-laws sitting at the house for us. I've never been more excited to go to the store in my entire life.

But, it's been a very long two days. We've been told to press forward and to remember he's not going to "get it" in two days. I guess I thought maybe he would? Or I was just hoping it was going to be as easy as everything else has been with him.

I've broken down crying. I've kicked myself thinking I misunderstood and maybe he wasn't ready like I thought he was. I've had poop on me and to my surprise I didn't freak out and go ballistic like I thought I would. We went through about 53 pairs of underwear. I thought quite seriously about calling it quits earlier today.

In this whole process, I'm most thankful that Todd is so supportive. He let me go to church today all by myself so I could get away from the potty stuff for two hours. And he kept encouraging me to keep going - that Tommy would get it and we just need to stick with it. I love that I have a team-mate in this and he hasn't left me to figure this out all by myself. My husband ROCKS for real.

Tomorrow, I go to work. My mom-in-law who watches Tommy for us is ready to help us stay consistent with what we've put in place this weekend.

I need a shower and probably another good cry.

Potty training isn't for wimps. And this whole process is most definitely weeding the wimpy out of me!