quote of the day

She takes my hand and walks me to the potty chair where she has deposited a lovely treasure...“Mommy,” she gleefully exclaims, “I made a whole worm of poop!”

how did we do it?

So I realize that people have all kinds of trouble potty training their children. We got pee in the potty in one day and poop in about two weeks. Go figure. It’s not like I have some magical touch. It must just be my daughter. I had read an email that was circulating around our neighborhood about how to potty train your child in three days. It essentially said this: 1) Let your child witness the throwing away of all the diapers and introduce her to big girl panties. 2) Set out the potty and tell her that’s where she needs to pee and poop. Insist that she must keep her new “big girl” panties dry. 3) Put her in a warm shirt, socks and panties with no pants and don’t leave the house for three days. 4) Give her lots of fluids and ask her pretty constantly if she needs to go pee (like every 5 or 10 minutes). 5) Praise her when she uses the potty. When she has accidents, tell her that what she did was “yucky”.
That was pretty much it, and that was about what I did. Except for the yucky part. I thought that was weird and that it would give her a complex. Both my husband and sister-in-law have odd stories of potty shame and we decided, you know, going potty, even accidentally on the floor, is nothing to be ashamed of. Oh, and we also decided after four sheet changes in one day that we’d give her a few months before we insisted on no pull-ups at naps and overnight. She’s still wearing those and she definitely doesn’t hold back when she’s asleep. She’s only two and a quarter though so we think it’ll be fine for a while. She never poops in the pull-ups. I think she doesn’t like the feeling.
We still wake up to a naked baby some mornings. I think she doesn’t like the feeling of pee in her diaper either and so takes it (and all of her other clothing) off as soon as she wakes.

last of the first

Naiya still has four teeth to go to complete her first set. Two of those last four have begun to come in this week. She doesn’t seem to ever have noticed any of them coming in at all.

she does, in fact, like to poop alone

So for a couple of days, whenever she had to poop, she would tell me it was time for a nap. Since she barely naps of late, and certainly never of her own accord, that was something of a give away. What it meant, I learned, was that she wanted to be alone so she could go poop...in her pants...in her bed. She knows that when I put her to bed, she is guaranteed some alone time. Clever girl.
So, okay. I get it. Easily remedied. When she tells me it’s time for a nap, I just leave her in her room where I have placed her little potty and close the door. She can’t get out and since we have a separate playroom, there really isn’t that much to do in her bedroom. I wait five minutes and voilà! She poops in the potty!
We make a good team.
And we have no more pooping in bed.

potty training day four

Our first and second day of potty training went amazingly well. As I wrote previously, it took her about four big girl panties and maybe six hours to get the hang of the potty. She’s peed in it every time since. Poop, on the other hand, seems to have complicated our agenda. On the second day I’m not sure if she decided she just didn’t want to use the potty or if for only about the fourth time in the past year she just didn’t have to go all day. Because she didn’t. Day three came and went until 3:30 or so without incident and likewise without poop. I was beginning to have concern. We had been running errands (amongst which was purchasing another potty so I wouldn’t have to keep lugging the one we have up and down the stairs all day), and we got home rather late. I laid her down for her nap at 3:30 and within about 10 minutes she was calling me to clean up the poop. Again in her bed. This time in the pull-ups I thankfully had purchased for just such an incident. Does she just like to poop alone?

like father like daughter

Along with the bringing in of a brand new cycle of seasons, we've begun a new chapter in the life of our daughter as well.
Potty Training - here we come!!
Two days in a row we woke to find a naked daughter in her bed. We think she just likes to take off her pajamas and diapers because by morning those Huggies are pretty full. Apparently, we figured, our time had come. Yesterday was the day of initiation and I have to say it went pretty darned well. We went through about 4 pair of big girl panties before she seemed to get the hang of it and, other than the poop in her panties in bed episode, we haven't had any soiled underwear since. Go Girl! Go Potty! (That's the title of the potty book Oma and Opa gave her for Christmas...we read that dang book about 15 times yesterday.)
Without any coaching, Naiya seems to have joined the male ranks of the family and already her first day decided that the potty is a good place to enjoy a book. The book she's reading is Punch and Judy, but she kept saying, "It's a cook book. Cook eggs. Eggs with butter." "Anything else in those eggs?" I asked her. "No," she replied. "Cook eggs with butter. It's in the cook book."