Dan, Genny and posterity

Celebrating Blog Post #300!

So Genny had this great idea to help encourage Elena to go potty on the toilet.  She put a poster board on the wall with numbered circles 1 through 20 and a toy that Elena had picked out stuck to the top.  The numbered set was labeled Pee Pee.  Similarly, there was a second set of numbered circles 1 through 10 with another toy at the top and it was labeled Poo Poo with a drawing of brown frosting...errr something.
Whenever Elena went Pee Pee on the toilet, we put a sticker on a numbered circle leading up to 20.  Whenever Elena went Poo Poo... wait, she didn't... we'll skip this case.

The toy at the top was a magnet sketching toy Elena called "Airplane" because it had a picture on the front of an airplane.

About 2 and a half weeks, Elena had made her way to 19 Pee Pee's.  Then she Pee Pee'd on the floor.  We took away 2 stickers.

Finally, she made it to 20 Pee Pee's!

I pulled down the toy as she shouted "Airplane! Airplane!"  I helped her open it.  The Airplane ended up being a piece of cardboard in front of the actual toy.  Elena was confused.  "Where'd the Airplane go?"
Then, I got an idea.  I put the cardboard back on the toy and traced the airplane.  "Ta da!"  Elena was thrilled.  "Airplane!"

This led to the next idea.  I went and got some UNO cards and started to trace numbers.  Elena was hooked.  She started practicing tracing numbers.

Two days later, without the UNO cards out, she said, "Dad! Lookit!"

"Five!" she said.

Genny says no one will read such a long post.  If you made it this far, you've proved her wrong :).