Here's the deal...

I never expected potty training to be a four part process that spanned...a year.  Yes, you read that correctly...a year.

In July of 2013, we began potty training Ryan (he is no doubt going to hate me when he's a teenager if he ever reads this) because I wanted to get him good and trained before Tony and I left for China and came back with his little Chinese sister.  That potty party part one was great fun (sarcasm) and so we repeated it (part two) a few months after Ryan's relapse after our return from China.

One of my favorite videos is from potty party part one which can be seen here.

A few months ago, we re-potty trained for the third time and it looks like this one is sticking.  Within a couple of days, Ryan was peeing in the potty like nobody's business and a couple of days after that, he went to bed at night sans diaper.

Success!

Except I can't get this boy to poop in the potty.  Every day he says, "mommy, I want to go poo poo in a diaper" and so I put a diaper on him, he poops and then we revert back to his big boy underpants.  For some reason, my brave little boy is deathly afraid of pooping in the potty (and yes, I understand this is fairly common).

So the other day, I decided to bribe, wheel & deal, whatever it took to get him to poop in the potty. 

Me:  Ryan, here's the deal...if you go poo poo in the potty you can have ice cream, cookies, chocolate, whatever you want.  OK?

Ryan:  OK mommy...here's the deal...(holding up 1 finger)...one elephant and one giraffe.

Needless to say, he's still pooping in his diaper.