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 :)