Potty Training Aria

We are now on day 6 of potty training. It was been a particular kind of torture for mother and child alike. Aria is the most stubborn child even to grace this world. I have done everything to make it a pleasant, rewarding experience for her. I have wrapped presents on the toilet. I have bowls of m&ms and jellybeans nearby. Yet she refuses. She even went so far as to sit on the potty, holding an m&m in each hand and finally I told her that if she was just playing around and not going to go pee pee that she needed to put them back. She gladly dumped the seemingly tasty treats back in the bowl to be free of the dreaded potty. She used her magical almost 3 year old powers to only pee one time, ONE time all day. She went to bed dry and woke up dry, 16 hours of holding her pee in. After my mother freaked out believing she must have an obstruction, I caved and gave her a diaper and told her to pee pee wherever she pleased. She peed in her room. She also managed to not poop for 5 days. Now, Aria is usually quite regular, so this was quite an oddity, again causing concern on the adult parties of this endeavor. When she finally did poop yesterday I attempted to use it, as the book says, as a training experience. We went to the potty, under where full of crap and sat on the potty. I then attempted to flick the poop into the toilet water, which was way more difficult than the book made it sound. I finally just had to dig my finger on the backside of a poop lump and scoop. All this poo scooping being done while a toddler leaned on me for balance in the big toilet. Of course my success at dislodging the turn was quickly squelched by the turd causing a backsplash as it plopped into the pool. A splash of delightful chemically blue toilet water that went directly into my eye. I let Aria down and pulled her soiled undies off just in time to notice I'd missed a chunk and it unceremoniously tumbled onto my bare foot. Poo water in my eye, poop on my foot.

Yesterday at about 9pm I knew Aria had to pee. I was determined after 5 days of living and breathing pee and day dreaming and real dreaming about the moment it went in the potty that this would be my shining moment. Finally at her breaking point, she literally couldn't stop holding her crotch without a little pee escaping. It was time. I took her to the potty, the big potty upstairs, as from what little I could tell, it was preferable to her over her own personal sized potty. I told her we were going to go and that it was going to feel so much better. Just real quick, let's do it. She resisted. She began to cry as I sat her on the potty. I held her there. Her cries got deeper and loader. As she bit her fist in a shriek of terror. The pee came out. Her other hand reached to block the stream. Then she was done. She refused her potty gift. Somehow it didn't feel like a win.