Elimination Communication-Our Experience

So I realized I promised before Ben was born to do a post about our experience with EC if we ended up doing it (that was one of those things that we thought we wanted to do, but weren't positive we actually would end up following through). Here we are, 8 months later, and we did do it, but I didn't fulfill my promise about the post. Oops! :-) So here you go.
We are not experts by any means! We first learned about it from my sister in law who did it with her kiddos. I thought it was an awesome idea but was skeptical as to whether it would work for us. I knew that, as a working mama, I would not be able to be nearly as consistent as she is with it-and both her her littles are girls, whereas mine is a boy! So I wasn't sure how those factors might change our success with it.
I set my goals fairly low at the beginning. My ideal world was that by the time Ben was eating solid foods, he would be doing all or most of his poop in the potty. Breastmilk poop is not a big deal or hard to clean. Solid food poop-a whole other (stinky) ball of wax!
I don't remember exactly when we started taking Ben to the potty. It was while I was still on maternity leave, so he must have been less than 3 months old. We noticed around this time that he almost always pooped within 30 minutes of waking up, so we would wait on the bed with him until he started to get "that look" and make some straining noises, and then rip off his diaper and rush to the potty. He wasn't old enough to sit up yet, so we sort of had him on his back (supported in our arms) with his butt over the potty. The first few times were a little messy (sometimes we didn't start rushing in time, other times we misread when he was done), but eventually, we started to notice a pattern: he woke up (often with a dry diaper) and waited for us to take him potty before he went.
We started trying to pay attention at other times when we thought he might need to go. He makes a certain face and has a specific grunting noise when he is getting ready to poop (sorry that's kinda vague-but I've heard that different babies have different signals) so we started being able to catch it in the potty. Hooray! At first, I was "cuing" him by hissing (you're supposed to cue them so they know it's time to go) but then I went back to work and his Dad started taking him-Josh thought it would be fun/funny to grunt at him when he wanted him to go, so that became his signal. However, Ben thinks it's hilarious when I grunt at him (it probably is, to be fair) so now he doesn't really have an audible signal, at least from me (unless you count me telling him, "Okay, I'm ready!" once we are situated over the potty)...but I still think he knows what to do, as he ALWAYS does some kind of potty when we get him into position.
We went through a bad run (haha) of diarrhea for about a week-he was pooping every 30 minutes, so we didn't even try to get him to the potty for most of those. I was a little worried that he would forget, but no-once he started moving his bowels more normally, we resumed pooping in the potty without a problem.
 I am not trying to get him to pee in the potty (though he almost always does when he poops and sometimes he just pees if I have misread his need/desire to poop)-I think this would be stressful for us and him, and I don't mind washing wet diapers in the slightest. I also don't worry about it if we have an accident and he ends up pooping in his diaper-in all, we are very chill about it. At first, I wondered if I was really saving us time, because the whole "potty" experience definitely took way longer than changing a diaper! However, now he has gotten pretty fast, and it's maybe 1-3 minutes at most! We have honestly used our diaper sprayer to hose down his little tushy after he goes way more often than we have used it to spray diapers (he doesn't seem to mind and it gets his butt clean way better than toilet paper!).
As for him being a boy-the biggest issue with this is that it's hard to aim him, and if I shift him while he is peeing, he stops. So we have perfected the art of using the back of the potty seat as a backboard of sorts (we squat in front of the potty, so he faces the back while he pees)-I know that sounds gross, but we do clean it afterwards! 
The other place I got information was www.diaperfreebaby.com-be warned, they sometimes make it sound like you are committing child abuse if you aren't fully EC-ing...but there is a lot of good how to information on there, and having now done it myself and watched a few people do it, I am convinced that you can be as full or part time with it as you want-babies are smarter than you think!
Oh, and I LOVE the fact that we have only washed one poopy diaper in the last month or more!