How to Potty Train a Tofu-bunny?

So this month Maggie got a potty.  It's a little red one, very simple, from Ikea.  Says it was made in Latvia!  So far, she's pooped on it twice and peed a number of times.  At the good suggestion of a friend, she has been receiving little rewards every time she uses it successfully.  I have a grab bag with small trinkets (mostly little Japanese animal- and Hello Kitty-shaped erasers and a few other things), but some how a bag of animal crackers ended up in my cart last time I went to the commissary, so these have been used to reward Maggie, as well.  Plus, she's not always so good at just taking one thing out of the grab bag... A tofubunny can fit more than you think into that little chubby paw!

And how is it going?  The first day was STELLAR!  She used it twice, once to pee and once to poop with very little prompting from me.   Then she picked it up and brought it to the big toilet, dumped it, put a wad of toilet paper in (just like Mommy!  Well, almost.  She failed to wipe herself with it first. Also, she likes to put the potty paper ALL the way in the potty rather than just dropping it in and trusting that it will make it into the flushable part of the bowl... *sigh*) and flushed! She loves to flush.  She also loves to wash her hands, thank goodness!  

And the next day?  Oh, she changed her mind and wanted very little to do with the potty.  She decided the floor was a better place to relieve herself.  I had been encouraged to buy her cute little panties because of the day before, but all that did was create laundry.  I have had to be more proactive, putting her on the potty every ten minutes or so.  If that means she can't keep playing what she was playing with, I let her watch a video on my iPad or play a silly iPad game.  Maggie now loves PokoPang and Birzzle.  I hope she gets good at Birzzle, so we can download the cute stickers for free for our fun new messaging app called LINE... Anyone with a smartphone who loves to use emoticons (ahem, T-Bone) should download this app straight away and friend us!  Our user ID is mimispyce!  LINE makes it very easy to share multiple pictures and videos, and they have the cutest stickers!  (Like emoticons, but cuter, funnier and more expressive).  Back to the story...

The conclusion?  Well, after a couple weeks of several morning and evenings a week without a diaper, her diaper rash is a lot better.  She's still not potty trained fully, however, and hardly uses the potty without a lot of input from me.  It keeps me very busy.  We would probably have more success if I didn't have also to meet Arthur's needs and could focus my attention on helping Maggie to appreciate the potty and want to use the potty.  Right now it's all I can do to get her to sit on it and be regular about it every 10 minutes when we are at home.  I don't think a cuter potty with more whistles and bells would help.  If I were able to be more consistent and not stop the training every time we go somewhere or have guests stop by because I don't have a big enough attention span to deal with my charges here, the outside world, and the possibility of an accident, we might be more successful, too.  Perhaps a potty story in French and one of those pants-wetting dolls I've read about might help... Next time, I suppose.

Some friends living in Hawaii took their daughter to Maui and sent her to a lady's house for the day who potty trains kids, professionally.  She likes to have a group of them and she potty trains them all in one day... Oh wouldn't that be nice?  If anyone knows of such a service here in Japan, please, tell me!

In the mean time, less or no diaper rash is worth the trouble.

How long do I have to sit here?

August 5, 2013: POOPY IN THE POTTY!!! 

YAY!!! Hello Kitty eraser for our efforts!