[erinlooneybin]

You can buy the potty and have it around (I started out by letting my daughter sit on it to watch Elmo fully clothed) to get her used to it, but you probably won't make much progress until she starts to show the signs of readiness (has the language to tell you she needs changed, wakes periodically from nap with a dry diaper, etc).

I would strongly recommend getting The Potty Training Answer Book. It really helped me. My daughter would ask for a diaper change, sat a couple times on the potty, woke from naps with a dry diaper and so we started trying to do more PT. She SCREAMED any time we tried to get her to sit on the potty. You would have thought there were cattle prods involved the way she carried on. So we backed off. I left the potty in the bathroom, but didn't push her.

One fateful, fabulous night in February she cried that she wanted to sit on the potty. I let her, but set a timer since I thought she might be stalling before bedtime. When the timer went off, she FLIPPED OUT because she didn't want to get up. As I tucked her into bed, she told me she didn't want to wear diapers any more. So the next day we started going to the potty every 15 minutes. I had her sit on the potty for 5 minutes. When she sat on the potty, she got a (VERY VERY) small squirt of lotion. If she went potty, she got a couple M&Ms. She was in underpants by Wednesday and accident-free by Friday.

We've had some accidents since then, but for the most part, it's been smooth sailing. In no way do I attribute our success to anything I did - it was all her. She was ready when she was ready and all I did was give her the tools.

Best of luck to you! Once they are potty trained it is SO much easier than diapers.

PS: when I refer to diapers in here, I am talking about pull-ups and specifically the Feel N' Learn or Huggies Cool Alert kind. I wanted her to be aware of the wet diaper sensation.