Thank you to P&G and Kroger stores for celebrating “Team Mom’s Everyday Victories”! Please visit the P&G’s event page to play games, win money off your next Kroger trip and more fun!

Your eyes lit up, and you smiled ear to ear. Your sister and I went crazy. Clapping, cheering, carrying on.

“I’m a big girl!”

You are a big girl, my pumpkin pie. It hasn’t been easy this time around….you’ve tested me over and over again with that dang stubbornness. But we both pushed through, and this last week? You’ve proven that you are a big girl now.

Potty training you, my third, has been full of ups and downs. The very first day, I nearly gave up. You screamed All. Day. Long. about how you did NOT want to be naked. I stood my ground, and that day, you hated me for it.

On the second day, though, I used your love for your big sister to my advantage when I asked her if she’d mind being naked, too (why I thought to do it, I may never know). She was, in a heartbeat and in a heartbeat, you were okay with it, too. And from then on, we did better. You had a few accidents, but for the most part, you ran to the potty when you needed to go.

But do you know that I was so angry at you last week at the picnic birthday party? We were only ten minutes from home, and you had been doing so well. “I need to go potty!” rang through the air each day, and your sticker chart continued to fill.

But that day last week, I ran out of patience. One accident after another, one pair of underwear in the trash, one mother at the end of her rope. I knew in my heart that it wasn’t your fault. That you were having too much fun on the playground, that it was too early in the process. But I couldn’t do it anymore.

The next day, I knew something had to change, or you’d be in diapers until kindergarten. Your daddy and I played the tough love card and it happened. Something clicked. You sat in the bathroom for twenty minutes, but we wouldn’t stand down. There was no poop in the toilet that day, but there was no poopy underwear either.

And the next day? You pooped in the toilet. Oh yes, you did. You got two stickers on your chart, and little baggie of Skittles, and it has been happening ever since.

Forget the park ten minutes from our house. All week you’ve gone to bible school in the evening, and all week you’ve worn a pull-up for the 40 minute drive and the two and a half hours at church. And every single day, you’ve kept that Dora pull-up dry as a bone.

Together, a month shy of your third birthday, we’ve conquered this potty training thing together.

I’m sharing our small victory as part of P&G’s Team Mom’s Everyday Victories campaign.

At Kroger and its banner stores, more than 30 of your favorite P&G brands are at HOT sale prices through June 23, including Tide, Charmin, Cascade, Pampers, Crest and Olay. Look for tags with special prices throughout the household needs and health and beauty aisles, and be on the lookout for even bigger offers – like getting serious dollars off when you buy a bundle of products.

Before hitting the store, visit P&G’s event page on Kroger.com,where you can play games like basketball, track and gymnastics to win money off your next Kroger trip, download digital coupons, print a shopping list, and learn more about P&G products.

I was selected for participation in this campaign as a member of Clever Girls Collective. But all the opinions, sweat, tears, and wet underwear are my own. And by “wet underwear are my own”, I mean I bought them for the almost-three year old and she got them wet during potty training. Ahem.