UPs and DOWNs

The theme around our house for the last week has been UP and DOWN.

Teeth – Josh’s two front teeth on the top are coming DOWN and going back UP. It won’t be long now until he has four chompers.

In a related matter, our mealtime dynamic is changing. Josh wants to feed himself – picking UP foods from the tray, dropping them DOWN on the floor (Hudson is LOVING this stage); batting DOWN our hands when we try to spoon in the yogurt or puree. I need a cheat sheet of nutritious, high calorie foods that are soft and can be diced into small pieces. I sense lots of hearty, veggie rich soups over the next few months!

Standing – Josh is UP and DOWN and UP and DOWN. He can now pull himself up to standing with any surface – even the wall – and is starting to pick-up cruising speed. We need to teach him to get back DOWN when he pulls UP in his crib. The bumps and bruises are also coming at a faster pace. The other night when he tried to pull UP in the bath, slipped, and crashed his head DOWN on the side of the tub. He split his eyelid open and, let me tell you, blood around the eye socket is terribly frightening! I’m surprised he doesn’t have a major black eye from that one.

Potty training – What a rousing success! I am so proud of Owen. He has really claimed the process as his own, We spent the weekend watching pants and underwear going DOWN and UP; stickers going UP on the fridge; jelly beans coming DOWN from the cupboard. Owen hasn’t had an accident since Saturday and is even wearing his underwear at school and during naptime!

I know we now have several weeks of vigilance – identifying a bathroom when we go out and about, carrying extra clothes everywhere, etc. We’ll also have to tackle nighttime, but what a change to know we’ll just be using one diaper at night instead of changing them all day long. Whoohoo!

And yes... I need to UPload some more pictures, but this will have to do for tonight.

Hit Me With Your Best Shot

Potty Training. Urgh.

I think I should just leave the post at that. We had that disasterous attmept back in July that resulted in our whole family pretty much defeated and in tears. Remember? We decided to wait and let Owen take the lead. That's what all the books tell you these days - don't push them, wait until they're ready, blah, blah, blah. Well, that strategy is not working at our house. I think we missed our "readiness" window early last fall. Owen was showing all the signs, but we were hesitant to try and train him 2 months before having a new baby - what if he regressed? Seriously? Would that have been so bad? Instead we've been changing diapers for a full extra YEAR.

All the books also say that the "old" method of potty training was too traumatizing for kids, but I'm really wondering? Are there any adults out there suffering PTSD from their potty training experience in the 50s and 60s? Maybe the "parent lead" method was a little regimented, but those kids got out of diapers WAY earlier than ours do. But I digress...

Regardless of the theory, I'm tired of changing diapers for a 3 year old. Especially one that will stop what he's doing, look me in the eye, and announce, "I'm peeing in my diaper." Kiddo, those diaper days are ending! The kids are staying with grandma/nana for a week starting next weekend, and Scott (and I) were feeling really guilty of sending them two kids still in diapers (espeically since one of those kids still isn't weaned and doesn't sleep well). Scott was musing, "maybe we should give the potty training a try again before we go." With nothing on the calendar today, I took a deep breath and decided to take a more forceful approach. No days of preparation, sticker charts, or pep talks. We just told Owen that today was potty day and that he wasn't getting a diaper. Tears, yelling, rolling on the floor, "But I WANT A DIAPER!" "But I Al-READY used the potty!" (2 months ago) and on and on and on. After an hour this morning, I was ready to cave, but I held on. We brought out the little potty for the downstairs bathroom.

After 2 hours, Owen was at least willing to play without pants on. He had one accident on the floor. We started pounding the gatorade. He started running back and forth to the potty every 10 minutes. He had one TINY dribble on the potty - 3 Jelly Beans! When I was upstairs putting Josh down for a nap, I heard a comotion in the bathroom then a toilet flush. Successful poop! 3 Jelly Beans. Now I had a proud, smiling kid. We called dad and grandma. The successes kept coming. The accidents happened too. But our count for the morning was 6 hits and 2 misses.

Owen is thrilled (and pretty hyped up on sugar from those jelly beans). I am thrilled - and feeling really nasty. This is a lot of bodily fluid to be dealing with.

I gave Owen a pull-up at nap time and told him that as soon as he wakes up, he should run to the potty. 45 minutes into his nap, I heard him crying and found him (still asleep) halfway out of bed, as though his body was trying to head for the bathroom. I tucked him back in - the pull-ups are there for a reason. Let's hope this continues this afternoon...