Potty Boot Camp - The final Score

Last weekend was our potty boot camp. We had a 4-day weekend dedicated to POTTY. Steve and I were alone with the girls for the entire day Friday and Saturday and we literally did nothing but potty: talking about the potty, training our potty dolls, practicing potty, having dolly practice, and talking about how the people we love go potty and love dry pants. We went into this event having read the book Potty Training your child in 24 hours or less.. I loved the book - it was a fast read, and aside from a few themes and language that was clearly from the 70s (the book was written in 1974), the concepts were great. 
First - the idea is that the child will first train a doll and thus they learn what is expected by teaching someone else how to do it. Score. We spent the first hour with these dolls and by the end, they knew where they needed to go, how to sit, that praise came from success, how to dump the potty by themselves, and of course pulling up undies. OH - and the dolly had an accident - we learned how we react to accidents, how they clean it up by themselves, changing undies, and practicing running to the potty from all over the place. Stop and run!
Then there is a lot of pants-checking. They needed to physically stop and FEEL their undies and confirm wet/dry. What does it feel like to be dry? What does it feel like to be wet? Huge praise for DRY. Then they started practicing - every 15 minutes. Absurd at the time. This gets stretched out as they have successes…
Day one was intense, following as close to the method as possible. Dry naps, I think we had two or three accidents between them… We decided to repeat a second day (not part of the book, but felt they needed refresher).. Our kiddos were definitely not accident free after a day, nor were they dry at night as some are after this method. BUT a week later, we have now had 3 days accident free, all dry naps, and a few dry nights here at the end! (Including one where Delia got out of bed, peed on the floor, and went back to bed - don't want the pee on the floor, but she knew she needed to get out of bed!).
Here are my thoughts. This method would have been much more successful if we had done one at a time. Having both girls around each other was distracting for them and more stressful for us. Doing it over, I would have taken one girl the first day, and the second girl the second day. The book doesn't say anything about training twins - this would have been a helpful chapter! So if you want to try it and you are doing more than one, that would be my biggest recommendation.
While it wasn't "successful" according to what the plan laid out, we weren't able to follow the method exactly - both because we had two and because they lost interest in the treats. I seriously thought we had an amazing variety of all kinds of crap they don't usually get - but they stopped getting excited about the 'treat' drinks and this totally wrecks the system because they need intake to have outtake.. Duh, right? And by day two we had lost our way in the method - we never switched from telling them to go potty to simply asking them if they had to and then progressing to casual comments about it - so they were left thinking we would tell them and they didn't go unless they were told. The point of the method is that you progress out of this so they go on their own with NO HELP from you. No having to stop everything and take them, clean up after them, wipe them, etc.. Stinky that we missed that , but I think it was also in part due to them not having to go as often and thus with the fast time schedule of the method, we were constantly having them sit based on the timer instead of them taking over that directing role.
And we made the mistake of trying pull-ups after our first soaked night. I used them with Josiah at night and he never called them diapers - and was typically dry. My girls instantly called them diapers and peed the second they put them on. The next night I tried putting their undies on first and then a pull-up (so they would feel the wetness?) and same thing. So I have an almost-full pack to get rid of - no more pull-ups! And I knew better, but still annoying.
However! They are now signaling when they need to go. While they still tell us (mostly I think to find their potties since we move them depending on where we are - need to get better about directly stating when we move locations!), they go by themselves, do undies by themselves (Delia needs help getting them over her bum sometimes, but she is practicing), dump their pots by themselves (need help with our flusher), and put the pots back. They don't scream about having to sit on the potty anymore because they are on their own time table - I only direct them before nap and bedtime, asking if their pants are dry (making them check and confirm) throughout the day, and if its been a long time (for Eden's steel bladder) I will casually ask her. With Eden last week, I never thought this would happen! But wow. The only accident that we've had in the past few days is Delia not getting their quick enough when going #2 - so it ends up half and half. AND when we took a trip to the zoo we discovered that Delia has a fear of public restrooms and she would not pee. So - I either need to bring a seat with or figure out how to get her past that. But we had our potty in the van, so in between stops and then on our way out of town, they peed in their own potty in the van (we had to help dispose of this, of course). Awesome.

Overall, I would totally recommend the book even though I didn't have total success. What I love the most about our results is that the girls are doing this independently - something I didn't have with Josiah (taking care of their potty, wiping, etc.). They love being able to dump their pee too! So its a win-win. I love the method and the reasoning behind it - its written by psychologists, so its all based on how a child's mind works and responds, which I thought was great. I need to work on making sure I limit drinks after 6pm - they guzzle at dinner, which is great - milk is good for them - but increases the risk of night wetting. Even if you don't want to follow any particular method when doing the potty training at your house, I would recommend reading the book just for the numerous ideas and insight you can garner from it. Plus its a super fast read - and I got quite a few chuckles out of the out-dated gender related advice. "If you want your husband to support your quest to toilet-train your child, simply have him be the one to change all of the diapers for a day" (like they wouldn't touch a diaper otherwise). The graphics are humorous too :)

Freezer Filling Frenzy/Crazy Ladies

Wow. Sometimes I go a little overboard. This time it worked out in my favor (in the long run), but let me tell you this was exhausting! My dear friend Amy wanted to do some freezer cooking to stock up for a busy summer month - we talked about just swapping recipe ideas, but then decided we would ship our kids off with our husbands and cook for a day together. 15 hours and lots of craziness later, my freezer is plum full. 
Before I get to the recipe list, let me just say this day was so much fun. Here is what NOT to do when you are going in to a massive day of cooking. Do NOT start compiling recipes at 11:30pm the night before. Do NOT grocery shop at 12:30am that morning. Be smarter than I was (don't procrastinate?!). Wear shoes! I would even suggest being ridiculous and bringing a second pair to change into - trick your feet! Check/re-check/triple check your recipes to your grocery list and then to the supplies purchased before starting. (Avoid running raggedly to the store the day of). Make an oven 'schedule' right away - we sat with the oven empty for several hours at the beginning while we were prepping non-baking things. Be wise owls folks! Have candy on hand. And chocolate milk - this produces better results. Have someone available to run you caffeine at 9pm. Also, next time we are planning to use a church kitchen AND our husbands to make the process SOMUCH faster. Plus we can trick them into washing the dishes by telling them "its a cool machine".. LOVE. Oh my goodness we had such a crazy fun day. A few curse words. Its okay.


Here is the rundown. Note that I put everything into 4 person meal sizes (8x8 pans or gallon ziplocks) - and one 8x8 pan would feed us dinner and then Steve and/or I lunch the next day. Except the baked mac- this makes two overwhelmed 8x8s, because I never remember to buy two bigger pans for it. So when I thaw it, I dump my 8x8 into a deep dish 9x13 and that is full. By splitting a meal into 2 8x8 pans, even a larger family could stretch any recipe by simply adding a side to a meal - but we typically still have leftovers even when splitting. SO many of these recipes make way more than what they say on the original post. I have noted by each item how many 8x8 pans it made. The burritos are an amazing example - the recipe says it makes 8, but it made 16. The enchilada casserole recipe was supposed to make one - I doubled the recipe and ended up with 3.


Dinners
1. *new* Summer time Beef Tips (recipe makes two meals)
2. Sour cream noodle bake (recipe makes 2 meals)
3. Baked Mac-n-Cheese (recipe makes 2 9x13 - so 4 meals for us)
4. Burritos (recipe makes 5 meals - I gave one to Amy, thats a lot of burritos)
5. Dump Chicken (made 2 bags): Pkg chicken tenders in gallon bag with half a bottle of your favorite dressing - marinate overnight then freeze.
6. Teriyaki Chicken (recipe makes 2 meals)
7. Pizza Dough (two large pizzas)
8. Best Burgers (I made 6 burgers with this recipe)

Bacon Crusted Pork -Photo from Vanessa Druckman

9. Bacon Crusted Pork Tenderloin (OHMYGOODNESSYUM. recipe makes 2 meals)

Spicy BBQ Stuffed Chicken - Photo onceamonthmom.com

10. BBQ stuffed chicken (8 giant chicken thighs stuffed - at least 2 meals): I made half with pepperjack (per recipe) and half with swiss for the kids.
11. Enchilada casserole (recipe makes 3 meals)
12. Garlic Bread (made 6 - 3 loaves halved)


Lunch-ish items
1. Mini meatloaf cups (recipe made 24 cupcake-sized meatloaves)
2. Pizza rolls (made 16): Pepperoni and Mozzarella rolled in crescent roll and baked - dip in pizza sauce.
3. Ham/cheese rolls (made 16): deli ham with slice of swiss rolled in Pillsbury crescent roll and baked. 
4. Tacos in a Sleeping Bag (recipe is ridiculous. Made 16 and had ton of meat left over -and started with less than a pound): Ground beef with dry taco seasoning (don't add water), with cheddar in a crescent roll and baked.
5. Corn Dog muffins. (made 24): I add 1tbls brown sugar and a little extra milk per batch - sweeter and keeps them from drying out.


Breakfast
1. Breakfast cookies (I quadruple the original recipe because we gobble these. I ended up with 4 plump gallon bags): You know me, I would not ruin these with cranberries. I add a bit of cinnamon to the recipe and then sprinkle with a tiny bit of cinnamon/sugar before baking.
2. Baked oatmeal (I doubled this, and baked shallow muffins in a tin so I could skip cutting/dishing them out of a 9x9 pan - genius. This way they are already portion-sized! One batch made 18 discs instead of the 9 bars you would maybe be able to cut out! Ooh, And I do NOT use fruit. I mix in a small amt of mini chocolate chips to the batter instead)
3. French toast sticks (The recipe easily uses up a loaf of Texas Toast Bread - which is huge - I made another half recipe to make more). For some reason the original recipe isn't available on their blog anymore - this is the toddler version which sneaks in some squash puree - puke. The original uses 12 eggs, 2c milk, 1/2c sugar and 1/2c melted butter. I add way more cinnamon just because that's the kind of people we are.
4. Idaho Sunrise (recipe made 24 cups, and PS I use way more bacon.)


Snacks
1. Sour Cream Chocolate Chip Banana Bread (made 3 loaves and 22 muffins - I only had 3 loaf pans! Make this. It's incredible). No nuts. Just delete that part of the recipe folks.
2. Pumpkin Muffins (made 120+)
3. *new* Energy Bites (Made a double batch): I change this recipe a bit. I detest coconut, and I never buy flaxseed. I used 2c of old fashioned oats, 2c of these same oats pulsed like mad in my food processor- it provides filling, but with different texture, then I use a cup with mostly wheat germ and 2Tbls or so of cocoa (round up!). And then of course the PB, Honey and mini chocolate chips. They are chocolately and YUM. My kids call them chocolate balls and think they are a cookie. Little do they know they are healthy little things - I could use dark cocoa to make it even healthier, but I don't like it, so I won't. I will freeze half of these…I hope...
4. *new* Crock Pot Greek Yogurt. A new wild hair. A couple months ago we made our own frozen yogurt cups with plain yogurt and frozen fruit and thought we could make these portable yogurts even cheaper by making our own yogurt. So I finally tried it. Its still in the crockpot bed under some bath towels (NO JOKE). But I am pretty pumped to try it out.


And I brought my camera.. And we didn't take a single picture. Boo. SO 20 hours or so (I finished some baking today), less than $300 - my family will eat stress-free for more than a month. I posted an inventory on the dry erase on my fridge so we can track when we take an item out and see what is left. I also noted thaw times and side items (hello husband!). I am pretty confident that this stock will last well into July and that cost includes sides like rice, potatoes, steam fresh veggies and refilling my staples like flour/sugar/butter, etc. The only thing we will need to buy is milk at some point. I LOVE it. Even better? My husband tried to get my kids a "treat" the night I was off cooking and bought pizza rolls - my kids didn't like them and Josiah said "mom, can't we have the ones you make? They are WAY better!". Score.