Sam...Sam...Sam...

So Sam is the only remaining member of the family in diapers (at least until Tom and I are quite old...). So for the past few days he's been taking off his diaper and putting on underwear all by himself. While I applaud this effort, it has doubled the amount of Sam laundry that I have to do, and today it crossed over into bed linens. It seems that Mr. Sam decided, while he was supposed to be napping, that he needed underwear instead of a diaper. Well, you can guess what happened when he fell sound asleep and his bladder relaxed. Anyway, after a short discussion about not wearing underwear to bed until one pees in the potty, we were off and running in our diaper again.

Let me back up a year and say that Sam was the first of the little guys to pee in the potty, so we all had great hopes that he would be the driving force in the potty training area. He looks up to Max, and so we assumed that those two fact would collide and he'd drag Ian kicking and screaming to the toilet one was or another. Well, sadly, that's not the case. Sam has asked over the past YEAR to pee in the potty on various occasions, and we oblige, even encourage him to do so. The, about a month and a half ago, Ian decided that he wanted to use the potty and just took it upon himself to do so. No big deal on his part (this from the kiddo who had NEVER used the potty in his life). Well, lots of stars, very few reminders, and only one accident later, he's good to go. Sam, on the other hand has announced to me several times this past week that he will wear a diaper until he's four, and that he will NOT pee in the potty until he's four. So, we're considering throwing him an early birthday party. Seriously, no party, but I have told him on several occasions that he does need to start peeing in the potty, but for one reason or another he just doesn't get it.

So back to this week. He really wants to wear underwear, but I have NO idea how to make that transition if he's not using the potty. I'm not interested in forcing him, but I think I'll just have to put my foot down. No potty, no underwear. One minor glitch is that he wears Pull Ups to gymnastics. He's supposed to be potty trained but I wasn't going to hold him out of a one hour class just because he wasn't peeing in the potty (tried to tell him that I would but he wasn't buying it). I did tell him that he's not allowed to pee int eh Pull Up, and so far he hasn't. But, he's not peeing in the potty, so I'm taking the Pull Up off right after gymnastics class and putting him back in his diaper.

I guess I'll continue being patient. I never thought that I'd be int his spot where Ian was wearing underwear and Sam wasn't. Guess this is the beginning of a long life of surprises on my part - boys...and I've got three of 'em!