The Portable Throne

We have a dilemna. Looking for advice on this one. Even if I don't know you and you happen to be reading my blog, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

We have recently moved into a 3 bedroom townhouse. The layout as follows:
UPPER: Girls bedroom, My/Traver's bedroom, playroom, Bathroom
MAIN: Living/Diningroom, Kitchen
LOWER: Cement basement - Laundry/Storage/Weight room

The stairs are posing a problem. If you noticed the BATHROOM is only upstairs. There is no half bath on the main floor. Keira can go up and down stairs no problems, but "needs"me to accompany her whenever she has to go up or down. Anika can go up and down no problem, but is SO slow and if I'm coming down at the same time, refuses to use her feet. She will stand on the step and cry until I carry her down. Traver does fine going up, but obviously can't come down on his own. We don't have carpet so I worry more about falls.

Toilet training Anika is going to be a bit of a problem because it's a real hassle to haul all three kids upstairs just to try to go potty and then haul them all back down. I can't take one kid up without the others following behind me crying. Hopefully this is just something they will get used to and they will realize when I go upstairs, I'm not leaving, and I'll be right back.

Keira's toilet training has taken a downward curve lately. She is only going 50% of the time, and the other half she's going in her pants, hiding behind the couch, or in the closet. Poop apparently is a two step process - Poop in pants, deposit in toilet, use 50 wipes to clean up. I'm really not understanding WHY Keira will go clean herself up after she poops in her pants. Why doesn't she just go to the bathroom in the first place - like she used to.

I'm TRYING to be patient with her but it's hard because she's been trained about 4 times now and keeps going backwards. As I was venting my frustration with her today and sat her on the toilet and explained that we poop IN the potty, not our pants - she yells back at me that she falls in the toilet at Daddy's house. Now it makes sense. She doesn't want to poop on the potty because she's afraid she'll fall in. P in all his brillant wisdom went out to buy a new toilet one day without my knowledge. Instead of coming home with the one we had agreed on buying (that we had previously bought at our old house and loved it), he comes home with an enlongated seat fancy toilet that belongs in a house worth much more than our shack. Putting that toilet in our house is like putting stone countertops in a mobile home. Ridiculous! The biggest problem with the toilet is we got it when Keira was first toilet training and its too long to put a child sized insert in it and we never trained with the little portable potty's and I didn't want to start. She eventually got the hang of it, but it was tough.

So the dilemna is - do I get a porta potty for the main floor? If so, where do I put it, or how do I monitor cleaning it? I can just imagine Keira walking around with a bucket full of pee! Or do I get an insert for the toilet to make her feel more secure, (even though she doesn't need it), or do I just keep doing what we are doing and try not to lose my marbles everyday when I'm cleaning poop off the walls, the ceiling, her clothes, the toilet etc.