Potty Training, Part 3

This morning I thought to myself, "I should write an update on our potty training." 

That was before E had three accidents today. It was the worst day we've had yet.

It's been two weeks since we started the process, and one week since she really grasped the concept and consistently used the potty.

Other than today, she's been doing really well. She still averages one accident per day, but considering she turned 18 months this week, I'm really pleased with her progress. I went into this with zero expectations, knowing that she's still really young and I'm really impatient but feeling she was ready if I was willing to teach. After way too much research, I was reassured that before the invention of disposable diapers many children were trained by E's age. Even now, many other countries potty train much younger than the US. Not saying this is good or bad, just that it's possible. One thing I knew for sure was that I was never changing a three year old's diaper if I didn't have to (barring physical/mental delays, of course). I was reassured by Bonni's video, that it's best to start before they "know too much" and then it can become a battle of wills. My little girl has a big personality and I didn't want to wait too long.

E's still mostly non-verbal but she has great communication skills. I credit our communication success with attachment parenting (*eye roll*) and being really in tune with her needs since birth, but I have zero proof for my theory and my parenting likely has nothing to do with it ;) I didn't talk until I was three, and was happy to let my older sister tell the world what I needed. 

Today we were in a parking lot and E arched her back and protested when I tried to buckle her into her car seat. I asked her what was wrong and she pointed to the flower beds, rubbed her fingertips with her thumb as she sniffed them letting me know she wanted to smell the shrubbery in the berm next to my car. She got out, sniffed, and then happily climbed into her seat to go home. Sign language at its best! But I digress. E can absolutely tell me when she has to use the potty. However, we're still about 50/50 for her telling me on her own versus me asking and her replying with a yes. Maybe once a day I still have to force her to sit and try when she doesn't want to because I know she needs to go, and then she will. (Side note, singing and playing games really have helped when she doesn't want to sit.) I'd love to get her telling me 100% of the time, because I think it would lead to less accidents in the long run.

She still has free access to a mini potty while we're home and she'll go use it by herself. This makes me nervous when we're out and about and she needs to tell me in time to make it to a restroom. I'm going to work on keeping training pants on her at home so she can learn that they're not a diaper and not to be used as such, but to hopefully help catch any accidents while we're out and about. We'll see how that goes.

She's been out with us a lot recently, and has done amazing when we're on the go. She had her first real accident away from home tonight, but luckily we were at the home of our close friends, and they were very gracious! I'm still a little afraid to leave the house with her, but she's proven herself [mostly] capable.

She still hasn't used an actual toilet, just her potty chair. Yes, it comes with us and she sits on it in the parked car. No, she's never actually done anything in the car, but it makes me feel more secure heading into a store when she's at least tried. Today I bought her a seat that sits on the toilet so she can get used to the real thing. So far she really likes it (it's the first time she didn't freak out when I put her on the toilet) but hasn't actually used it. This is a little challenging because we're usually downstairs and our only bathroom is upstairs. I plan to work with her on this over the next few days, though, in hopes of making outings a little easier.

So overall we've been doing really well. We've had some tears and some chuckles along the way, and we've learned a lot.

This morning while I was upstairs, E peed in her potty downstairs and then tried to carry it up to me so I could flush it. She made it halfway up our stairs before spilling the contents all down the bottom half of the stairs. Thanks, sweetie :) She really is adorable, and is digging the whole process. We're having so much fun watching her grow up!

Learning to Self Soothe

As a mama to a high needs infant who loved to be held 24/7 and took ninety percent of her naps in my arms or the Moby wrap (and the remaining ten percent in a swing), I've lost track of the number of times that well meaning friends, relatives, bloggers, and baby sleep experts have informed me that my baby would need to cry herself to sleep in order to learn how to self soothe. I have a book written by a sleep expert that informed me if she didn't learn this skill between four and nine months of age (if I remember correctly) then she would have sleep trouble her entire life. This advice sounded believable until I actually had her :) I can't say that I initially disagreed with the concept that self soothing is a learned skill, per se, but as a new mom I knew I wasn't about to force the process any time soon. I figured we'd just cross that bridge when we got there, whenever that happened. I've never known a five year old who needed to be nursed to sleep, so I wasn't too worried.

What I wasn't prepared for was E initiating the process of putting herself to sleep at sixteen months. One day she didn't want to be nursed to sleep for her nap. She wanted to be in bed, by herself. She did cry, but for the first time ever it was in a relaxing, getting settled sort of way rather than the full out war I had been used to, and in a few short minutes she was sound asleep. She didn't successfully get herself to sleep every day, especially if we had friends over or she felt she was missing something fun downstairs, and I always picked her up if the whimpering escalated to crying or screaming. Some days she still wanted me to help her out and I gladly rocked her to sleep, but after a few weeks of gradual toddler-led transition somehow my daughter decided she just didn't need me for nap and bedtimes anymore.

Now she loves going to bed and she decides when it's time to go upstairs to sleep. Today I actually took her outside to splash in some water to distract her from her desire to nap mid-morning. When she's ready, she'll grab my hand and guide me upstairs, lay still while I put on her diaper, and snuggle with her teddy bear as she lays her head on the pillow. Just this week she's started waving goodbye to me as I leave the room, almost as if to say, "get out of here already!" *tear* How did she grow up so fast?!

So now we have the benefit of a two minute nap time/bedtime routine. It almost seems too easy. Almost. And then we're away from home for the day and I remember why I liked the previous routine, aside from the obvious snuggles. No longer will she nurse to sleep and then stay asleep anywhere, anytime. She now has trouble getting to sleep anywhere other than her own (okay, my own) bed, except for the occasional snooze in the car seat. On Mother's Day when she was at Grandma's all day, she went the entire day with no nap whatsoever. It's been a bit of an adjustment making sure we're always home for nap time. Well, except for this week when we didn't leave the house at all for the purpose of potty training.

Fortunately, E's still super cuddly and makes sure to get all her snuggles in during the day. She gives amazing arms-squeezed-around-the-neck hugs that could melt even the iciest of hearts. I guess I'll have to forgive her for growing way too fast.

Puddles of cuteness

On a completely unrelated note, my beautiful baby has only had one accident since Wednesday morning. Potty training success! We'll see how it goes when we venture out of the house this weekend.

Potty Training Week 1

[This post is on potty training our 18 month old daughter. If you'd like to skip the nitty gritty details, come back tomorrow :) ]

Well, we've been at it a week.

I've learned a few things in the past week, the most important (in terms of training E) is that the kid doesn't pee when she's awake. E is a great eater, and she always has water available in her sippy cup. She asks for it if she can't find it, and I've never really given her drinking habits much thought until this past week. However, the first three days of training, she'd only go while awake about 3-4 times a day which made it really difficult for her to figure out what was going on.

This was only made worse by her latest sleeping habits. Last month we switched our runs to the mornings rather than the evenings. Running as the sun comes up is glorious, and it is a great start to the day. I highly recommend it! I'm miserable for the few minutes that I'm trying to wake up, but then the rest of the day I'm so thankful I did. I love getting my work out completed first thing, seeing Chou before he leaves for work, and getting an early start to the day. But this post isn't about running...

When we switched to morning runs, E's sleep schedule blew up. Seriously. She had been sleeping from midnight (I know, I know) to 8 or even 9am and taking a 1-2 hour afternoon nap. However, we get up before 5am to run, and she started waking at that time every day, whether or not we were running. This means she's now ready for a nap by late morning and will sleep 4+ hours without stirring at nap time, and then be ready for bed closer to 10 or 11pm. [Since she's never consistently napped until about two months ago, I really hate to wake her while she's napping. That time to work, clean, or veg is just amazing! Compounded with the fact that if I limit her to a two hour nap time she wants a second nap at 7pm. No good can come of that.]

And then out of nowhere she started waking for the day around 1-3am. Unfortunately this started on a week that we had another kid staying with us and we were unable to use E's room, because it was occupied by our sleeping guest. In the past, we'd put E in her room if she woke and wouldn't settle in the middle of the night and then 15 minutes later she'd be ready to settle down and sleep and we'd have no more issues. This time, though, we couldn't use her room when this started, she got in the habit of waking and not wanting to go back to sleep, getting worse as the week progressed instead of better. Ironically and utterly frustratingly, this meant we weren't in any shape to get up before 5am to run. 

For those of you who are more visual, E's days now look like this:

So now it's time to potty train, and we only have the pink areas shown above to work with while green areas are working against us since E's awake but in diapers. Inevitably she only has to go maybe once in between waking and nap time, and then two or three times between nap time and bedtime.

In hind sight I should have fixed the sleeping schedule before trying the potty training, but what's done is done. Instead I've been trying to decrease nap time, but inevitably for every 15 minutes I take off of nap time she seems to want to go to bed a full hour earlier, and then she's up even earlier in the middle of the night. Sigh... I've also been working really really hard to get her to drink more when she's awake. I spent the first three days of potty training trying everything to get her to drink. I tried milk, tea, homemade orange julius, and anything else I could think of. Nothing tempted her. We've drastically increased her salt intake and she now will occasionally drink watered down kombucha [fermented tea that we make], but only if it's in a coffee mug. Some days she'll drink black tea with honey and milk, but not always, and of course she won't go near it unless it's in a mug like mine. Needless to say, I didn't do much but clean up puddles of pee and tea for the better part of last week.

E's been a trouper through it all and didn't seem to care one way or the other when we started. She enjoys the extra attention and generally enjoys her little potty. We sing, play games, and dance while waiting for her to go, and she routinely brings her stuffed animals and dolls for their turn on the potty. Yesterday she protested her diaper at bedtime and she's been more adamant about taking it off the minute she wakes up, so I think she's starting to get used to the freedom and dry bum.

Most importantly, she does finally seem to be getting the whole potty thing. Yay!!! She had one accident when she woke up today (which is typical since she's been awake but wearing a diaper for hours at that point), but we caught everything else in the potty. For now we're going to stick it out a few more days and hope everything sticks before venturing out diaper free. I'm still not 100% sure we're going to be successful this round, but I'm increasingly optimistic. Wish us luck :)

Gardening on Concrete

E and I planted our itty bitty container garden last week. Living in the city, we don't have the space for a real garden especially since our microscopic back yard is completely shaded and claimed by our dogs. E loved mixing the potting soil, planting, unplanting, replanting, splashing in the water, making mud, drinking mud, and splashing in more water to clean off.

We grow some herbs every year, and this year we added some cherry tomatoes. E loves tomatoes, and supposedely you can grown them in containers. I'm still skeptical, but we have one small spot of sun where they're currently growing, so we just have to wait and see how they do. I dream of a yard with enough space for a real garden, although I have zero skills at growing pretty much anything. I have an indoor ivy plant that I routinely almost kill and then nurse back to life. Yeah, I can even kill ivy. But I love the idea of growing our own veggies so we know exactly where they came from and how they were grown. We also really enjoy canning and freezing, and would love to have our own harvest to preserve. For now we're enjoying what we do have and counting on our CSA to do the heavy lifting.

The Potty

This is it. This is the week we're buckling down and not leaving the house until E masters the potty.

I was originally thinking I'd wait until June, but it's time. E knows exactly what her potty is for and has been able to get on and off by herself for awhile now. She's perfectly capable of using it, just entirely unmotivated. The determining factor is that her diaper rash came back in full fury. It first appeared several months ago after I switched to Eco Sprouts detergent. After treating her bum with grapefruit seed extract and raw coconut oil while simultaneously treating her cloth diapers, we got rid of the stubborn rash only to have it resurface last week. Everything is under control again, but I've had enough. I don't know if the rash is caused by the new detergent or if it has been hibernating in the diapers, but I'm hoping not to stick around long enough to find out. E is more than ready to move on and I just need to muster all the patience in my being, put on a nice plastic smile, load up on chocolate for both of us and get it done. 

For some extra motivation I ordered some adorable training pants that will hold small accidents, seeing that E is still young and we will need them when leaving the house for the next few weeks.

I'll be starting Tuesday afternoon and hope to be making significant progress by the weekend. My hope is to put her on her potty every thirty to sixty minutes for the first few days and give her chocolate and/or stickers for every successful act until she is motivated to do it herself. (When the rash first appeared a few months ago, I got out the potty just to see what she'd do, and she used it first try. She had days where she'd use it up to 70% of the time, and days where she didn't use it at all. So now we just need to make her want to use it because we know she can.) I'm planning on keeping her in diapers for naps and nighttime for as long as it takes for her to wake up dry and make it to the bathroom. I'm thinking she'll get the hang of naptime pretty quickly, but I'm not in any hurry for now.

So... now I have to stick to the plan since it's been made public ;) ...or we'll just try again in a few months if all the patience in my being just isn't enough, which is a distinct possibility.

Today I'll be running all my errands for the week and getting some fun activities for us to do at home. Container gardening, anyone? 

Off to load up on wine and chocolate to get me through... :)

Here's the before picture. Hopefully we're still smiling for the after!

Sertoma Chicken Barbeque

Chou loves the Sertoma Chicken Barbeque, mainly because it's the largest chicken bbq in the world (or so they claim), usually selling around 30,000 chicken dinners. I'll never fully undertand the obsession with paying for overpriced mediocre chicken, but that's part of why I love Chou. He takes pleasure in the little things in life, and loves being a part of things bigger than himself. 

I do fully enjoy supporting local businesses, and many of them come together to make the bbq a success. The meal is full of locally made chicken, iced tea, chips, ice cream, and produce from a local distributor. Many businesses and raido stations take part in the day, and it's always a fun little outing.

This year, E collected goodies from various venders, devoured her chicken, and played in the grass until she was downright exhausted. I'll call that a success any day!

 

Only a toddler...

...pulls the dog's tail, and then whines because she has dog hair on her hand.

...thinks the chili is disgusting when I feed it to her, but digs in with two spoons and a fork (simultaneously) when allowed to feed herself. And proceeds to cover herself in said chili head to toe to floor in the process of devouring an entire bowl.

...starts to throw a fit, and then busts up laughing instead. 

...protests when you give her exactly what she asked for.

...feeds the dogs endless table scraps and then complains when they beg for her food.

...uses her car seat as a recliner when watching TV, but protests and arches her back when it's time to get in the car.

...puts the tortellini off to the side so that it's easier to pick out and eat all the kale in the soup.

...is the most OCD person I know, and yet I spend 90% of my day cleaning up after her.

...can make me experience seemingly twenty conflicting emotions simultaneously, multiple times every day.

all examples from the last three days :)