Mommy's tale - diaper training

After we got back from our Asia trip, here comes the point Mommy can't stand changing diaper anymore. April was 2 months after 2. Mommy tried it once at Dave's apartment in Beijing, we were all staring at the TV screen after taking the diaper off April. So April peed on his sofa. It was embarrassing but Dave didn't care, it was his landlord's furniture. According to grandma, kids in Fuzhou got tained early, couple kids she knows of got diaper trained way before 2. So April is really late with the game already. Yet according to our daycare lady, she suggested doing it as early as 2.5 years old. She warned us, kids have to be ready. When they are ready, it works fast, couple weeks time, they will be trained. Some kids understand earlier, but don't worry if you have to wait until 3 years old. She also explained, couple kids there the mothers got anxious, so they trained from 1.5 years old, and it took them at least half year to train. Think about 2 weeks time vs. half year? It is much better deal. But after changing diaper for 2 years, it's the time when you say " I am sick of it period" So Mommy started her solo journey, since the other person in the household doesn't agree to do it. By deduction, there are only 3 person in the household, it's not hard to guess who that person is. He claimed forcing the kid too early will have psychological damage to the kid. The end result is the kid will grow to be annal on lots of everything if trained too early. Training too late, the kid will be slobby with everything. Neither is good, just need to find the right time to do it, then the kid won't be on either extreme. Yeah right, easy to say, when is that precise point of time? 5 years old? Eventhough he disagree, same as my daycare, they do help me around, not enthusiastically, but they did help and I should credit them. Anyway, this kind of training obviously involves lots of cleaning and washing, emtional and mental stress to both the giving and receiving ends, countless repetition of the discipline even the recieving end clearly understand the reasoning behind it from the start. Training the brain to control that muscle on demand is not as easy as understand the reasoning Therefore, it took us 4 months, and there is a bummer towards the end. We did our annual visit to MN to grandma, grandpa and auntie Linda. We bought those late night flight ticket, cheaper and April could sleep on the plane. All is good when we landed on MN airport, everyone is half asleep, then April told us she needs to pee. Found the restroom, put her down on the edge of the toilet, suddenly it started flushing, so loud, even I was startled. April cried, she got really scared. She refused to sit back and hold it until we got home. Those are the automatic kind, the sensor fired off too early, and the flush is very powerful. Then April started being afraid of adult toilet, it's not obvious to her whether it's the automatic kind or not. So I started to notice she's not doing as well as before, but couldn't figure out why until 1 day, I only put her on her plastic training potty. She did fine the whole day. Then I started to realize what caused that. We had to bring a plastic bowl around for sometime whenever we go out, and April slowly gains back her faith on adult toilet. It took about 2-3 months for her to re-adjust. Potty trained is such a relief for me, I probably didn't do it at the "right" time, since it took so long. April still on and off for night time, so I still put training pant on her before bedtime. I hope she will be off that too, then again the second is coming...Sign!