Yea!! She Did It!! 9/1/10

Back in February Samantha started showing interest in using the "big girl" potty. I thought, "Well, she's a little young, but if she is interested, I'm gonna go for it!". She did pretty good for being so young. She made lots of progress with going on the potty at first, but then her progress kinda stalled out. She would always go when I put her on the potty, she would sometimes ask to go to the potty and would go, but there were many times when she would just continue to go in her diaper. I wasn't quite sure what to do to make her ALWAYS go on the potty and not just sometimes.

After asking for some advice from other Mommies, we decided to try a treat bucket. I went to the Dollar Tree and bought about $5 worth of little trinkets. Every time she would go on the potty she got to pick out a treat. That seemed to make a difference!
Since Samantha started making a lot of good progress we decided we need a "big" reward for staying dry for a week. We were at Costco one day and we saw a Cinderella dress with wand and crown for $24, which is an awesome deal!! So we decided that it was meant to be to have that be Samantha's "big" reward.Well, we anxiously spent a week making sure Samantha stayed dry. In the beginning of the week I took her to the potty about every hour. I gradually spread the trips to the potty further apart. By the end of the week I was not asking/reminding her to go. I waited until she told me she needed to go. Still no accidents!! She made it! She went a whole week with only going potty i the big girl potty! So, she got her dress! This is the look on her face when she realized that she earned her Princess dress.....priceless!
Note to anyone else doing this.....take all the tags and stuff off before you try to reward your child with it. ;-) Samantha very patiently waited for me to get all the tags etc. off.
She got tired of waiting for me to get the wand and crown off so she started taking the dress off the hanger herself.
Then she tried to put it on by herself. This dress has like 3 layers of dress so she got herself all tangled up.....
So I helped her get her new dress on.
Samantha makes the most cute, beautiful, precious Princess ever!!
Still, Samantha is doing a GREAT job! Even through trips to the zoo, grocery store, and rides in the car to Chicago, she still has not had an accident. Now to figure out when i start having her wear underwear all the time. ;-) How brave am I? ;-)

We are SUPER proud of her and that she showed the interest and is potty trained before she is even 2 1/2 years old! :-)