Potty Trained

Dare I say it...it's still hard for me to believe...our kid is potty trained...mostly! :) I haven't taken any pictures of this step in our lives, but I couldn't resist last night. Ethan was sitting on his toilet and asked for a blanket...must mean the pregnant lady is controlling the air conditioning and that even a few minutes of exposed skin is unbearable! From here on out, you probably only want to read this if you have recently done this or are going to or you're just really bored...it'll probably be long.
I was scared to make an opening post saying that we were starting to potty train our son because I just knew it was going to be horrible...I was DREADING it! I just knew we would fail and then I'd have to do a failure post. I was putting it off...not that I really thought he was ready, but I was still knew I wanted to give it a try before having another one in diapers! Ethan was terrified of the idea of sitting on the toilet...I don't know how he got this fear, but it was REAL! Because he was showing absolutely no desire, I just kept waiting...the whole time eating my past thoughts about how I just knew that kids should be potty trained early.
Well, as time until new baby dwindled, I decided we'd better just go ahead and give it a shot. A couple months ago, I decided to get serious and buy some Pull-Ups...Ethan hated them...and he didn't act like they were any different from diapers...we had company and I decided I didn't want to deal with it while we had visitors. After getting back from Louisiana, I realized there really wasn't anything I could use as an excuse anymore, so I decided to just go for underwear. So much better! After only 2 days of having accidents, he was using the toilet...VERY RELUCTANTLY...but doing it! It took about a week to completely lose the fear, but it happened. For the past 2 weeks, we've been making more and more progress towards independence and being able to leave the house. (We left the house in the beginning too, but I would always put him in a diaper...I was so scared that he would have an accident in the grocery store or something...probably wouldn't have been as bad as I thought, but I've learned that I was totally scared to be that mom!)
The reason for the "mostly" at the top is that we still haven't conquered sleep times. Again, it might be my fear of never-ending laundry that's holding us back, but I've continued to put him in a diaper for bedtime. My plan is to attempt that when I feel I can trust him to do the whole process by himself.
Lesson to be learned: I shouldn't make things such a big deal...it definitely has been a process of ups and downs, but it wasn't as bad as I was expecting...don't get me wrong...it wasn't great...but I was REALLY dreading it!
P.S.--This is what our stuffed animals have looked like for the past little while. :)