Milestone (and reward) for Ben!

Check out Ben's new wheels...

   

After nearly a year and a half of being a full-time potty user during the day, Ben has still been wearing diapers to bed at night. He is a very heavy sleeper and simply wasn't waking up. It wasn't a big deal - he wasn't ready, and there wasn't much we could do about that. But we did think throwing in a little incentive might help things along... so we told him that we would get him his own John Deere tractor when he was finally sleeping in undies like a big boy. 

He adores these tractors. He has some kind of radar and spots them in any store that carries them. He really wanted to earn his tractor, but he just wasn't ready. Last summer he was nowhere near being able to sleep without a diaper, but at least he knew that he wanted to work toward it. 

By this summer, however, he was waking up dry more and more often. We started him with a marble jar to keep track of his progress. He had 14 marbles, and each time he woke up dry he could add a marble to his little jar. If he woke up wet, we would take one back out. You can see how this would take a long time and some real consistency to earn them all. But finally, he was getting a marble more often than not and we decided to make the switch to undies. We had our share of changing sheets in the middle of the night, but he kept trying and got more and more consistent and finally earned all of his marbles at the end of last week. 

He was so proud of himself... and he could not wait to get that tractor! Adam took Ben out for some boy time over the weekend to get the tractor and go out to lunch together. Unfortunately the battery had to charge for the first day, but since then he's been riding it a bunch each day. He does really well with it, and is so excited every time he sits down on it!