Where's my padded room?

I once read somewhere (actually multiple places, but whatever) that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result.

I wouldn't consider myself an insane person.

Although I do have my moments. Like being in the grocery store with two extremely cranky children and having the sudden urge to leave them in the cart while I run away.

But, unfortunately, most things that pertain to raising children can be considered insane.

Like potty training.

Oh, the potty training. The oldest was potty trained at 3. She actually did pretty well, with only a few accidents. I, of course, being the masochist that I am, forced her to go on many trips during the 1st six months after she was dry during the day. Including a 3 day, 2200 mile move from one side of the country to the other.

With the last two, I've been forced to potty train them virtually at the same time. Not that I didn't try to get the 5 year old potty trained before this. Oh, no. I've been trying on & off since the 3 year old was born. But, now that said 5 year old is going into Kindergarden, this needs to happen. Like yesterday. The 3 year old does pretty well. Most days she's dry all day, but I still put a pull-up on her at night.

Because it seems her bowels get too relaxed when she's sleeping and that just makes more of a mess for me. Yeah I know, I'm a wimp.

I have tried numerous different potty training techniques. The kid knows how to tell me when she needs to go, she just won't 95% of the time. She goes in waves. It's driving me up the wall. Most recently I've done the timer thing, where I set an alarm to go off every hour.

But this sounds more like I'm the one being trained, not the kid.

School starts in less than a month, and we're no closer to her being in underwear than we were 6 months ago. I'm at a loss, completely out of ideas, at the end of my rope, hit the bottom of the barrel. And all those other cliches.

But, because I don't want to be the only parent with a kid wearing both a bra and a pull-up, I'll keep chugging along.

Because I'm insane.