Potty training...or the hardest week of my life as a parent!

I realize this post might not be the most exciting post to many of you. However, I wanted to have a record of our experience so I'd remember the next time around. Thanks for enduring the subject ;-)!

There seems to be 2 popular school of thoughts right now for potty-training. One is to start early, closer to two and the other is waiting until the kid is closer to 3. I thought we'd wait till C was closer to 3. We didn't want to push her and for a long time she showed NO interest in the potty. In fact she seemed terrified of the potty. Until one day out of the blue a couple weeks ago she asked to sit on it. I was in shock but she actually went! I still felt like she was to young to start training but she wanted to go on the potty more and more. Then she started randomly taking off her diaper after she had gone in them. This was a HUGE frustration and mess for me. I got advice from a couple friends who had recently potty trained, read a couple "potty training tutorials", and picked a date when we didn't have much going on for several days. The weekend before I stocked up on cute panties, cleaning supplies, plastic bags, meals to throw in the crock-pot and some wine for me! Monday morning I told C we were getting rid of diapers except at nap times and she was only going to wear panties. The rules were she had to keep them dry and let Mommy know if she had to go potty. We started with a timer set for 25 minutes. When the timer would go off I'd rush her to the potty to try to go. This was a major frustration for both of us. She fought going to the bathroom and I learned that she can hold it for 3 to 4 hours at a time. We ended us using a different approach. Every time she started to dance around like she had to go or when she would start to go I'd scoop her up and say, "Let's go to the potty. You gotta keep your panties dry." She would get a M&M anytime she went at all in the potty even if she had started going on the floor in her pants. When she didn't want to sit on the potty I'd bride her by giving her paci or lipstick to put on. I had to "catch" her going EVERYTIME she had an accident so we were glued to the hips the first couple days (thus the reason for the crock pot meals - I couldn't occupy my time with cooking!). The first three days were really rough. Caroline is really head strong and did not want to be made to anything out of her control. Each day she had 15 to 20 accidents. I couldn't show her my frustration, all I could say was, "keep your panties dry and tell mommy when you need to go". At one point I had to go to the other room to cry because I was so frustrated! By the second day I had so many self doubts. Maybe I was starting to early or I was doing everything completely wrong....ahahahah! Towards the end of day 3 I was convinced I'd made a huge mistake! Then a miracle happened, she asked to go and made it to the potty without an accident. That was it. She has had a couple accidents since that moment but not many. She has even started yelling for me at nap time and night time to get her out of her crib so she can go potty!