Owen is a big boy! He is potty trained. I am so happy! About every six weeks I'd try for the morning to take off his diaper and either let him run around naked or just put on underpants. He would pee in them all. 16 pairs one morning. So I knew he wasn't ready. It was frustrating because the child has pooped in the potty since 20 months. Finally this last two weeks he seemed to stay dry longer. One day he said, "I have to pee" and ran to the potty... that time he didn't make it but he recognized the feeling and within a week or so he was holding it!
I don't know when you drop the diaper at nap time and bedtime... I'll have to ask some other mom's because he seems ready for that too since his nap and bedtime diapers are dry after he wakes up.
Here are some things he's said recently. Mommy: "Owen, how did you like camping last night?" Owen: "I peed on a tree" "No, Thank you" -- he says this to the funniest stuff. I need to write one down. "Aweee, it's okay girl" (he says this to Kaibee when Thunder rolls outside-- she get scared) "Mommy are you sending messages?" When I'm at the computer he says this. from the bathroom, "Harper, Chill" after sleeping in our bed... Matt went to check on him and he was at the top of the stairs (he had let himself out of our room -- probably the first time he's woken up from sleep and been able to get out of bed himself) "Daddy, I cannot go anywhere" Owen, what is your favorite thing about school? (we visited a preschool and meet the teachers at Matt's elementary campus) "The mini potties," what else, "I can wash my hands in the sink myself." Vovo Pirate told Owen that if he could keep his pants dry and pee in the potty, she would give him a truck, he said, "I need to pee in the potty now." She said she would give the truck to the mailman and now every time the doorbell rings Owen says, "it's the truck!"
So I thought I'd just do a quick stream of conscientiousness post about where the kids are with all their "stuff" Harper is 8.5 months and is crawling, pulling up to stand and sleeping fairly well. She gets up usually only once in the middle of the night, nurses and goes right back to sleep. Occasionally she'll get up one other time and then sometimes get into a bad habit of waking 2-3 times. Recently that happened and she was waking at 11PM, 1AM and 4AM. One night we let her cry herself back to sleep during the 4A wake up (with Mommy at her side for part of the time) but it took her 1.5 hours and she didn't want to be held and I didn't nurse her (I wanted to wait until at least 6AM) and then the next night she was back to waking only once. I love holding sweet Harper when she has just fallen asleep and puts her thumb in her mouth and is on my chest right before I lay her in her crib. It's a very sweet bonding time for us and I know it doesn't last forever. She isn't really into reading stories yet but we've begun trying to read her some before bed from time to tome. She still just wants to put everything in her mouth and eat the books. She has two bottom teeth but that's all and she loves to eat in general. If you leave her alone for two seconds, she'll have a hairball and a bark chip (from the plants) in her mouth. She moves it around in her mouth and spits it out. She is such a sweet baby that I am NOT looking forward to her growing up like I did with Owen. She is at that quintessential baby age where they love rattles, laugh and explore everything. She goes to bed around 7PM and wakes up between 6-7AM and if she is up early, one of us gets up and walks down to the coffee shop while the other one sleeps in. Owen wakes up around 7AM.
Owen: is 28 months(2yrs) and talks and talks and talks. He frequently has 7-9 word sentences and is beginning to tell us how he feels. We are unsure if he really means it or if he's just repeating some memorized phrase but he'll say things like, "Daddy, I don't feel so good." and "I'm not hungry." He had been telling us when he has to poop with more regularity first beginning with "My stomach hurts" and then progressing to actually telling Matt he has to go potty or poop, which is great. Now if he could just recognize the signals for peeing!! He is pooping on the potty very well now but doesn't care about being soaking wet and will wet his "big boy" pants if we put them on him and he doesn't care about being wet. We try about every two months with the big boy underpants to see if he can keep them dry but he's too busy to stop and pee. I'm not pushing it and I'm just glad he doesn't poop in his pants anymore. GROSS! Owen sleeps from 1PM-4PM and often we have to wake him up around 4PM or he doesn't want to go to bed. He goes down around 8PM but could stay up later and often talks to himself in the crib for an hour in the pitch black darkness. He loves the movie Cars and has a lot of the die cast cars -- his favorites at the moment are "Gill" his green 18-wheeler. He has watched the whole movie cars many times at home and has begun to enjoy watching "shows" or TV. We only let him watch actual TV for 30 minutes a day if at all because Mommy hates the commercials. He likes Max and Ruby, Little Bear, Go Diego Go, Dora and some others but we really don't watch a lot of TV. I use it sometimes if I have to go upstairs to put Harper down and it buys me some "safe" time with him sitting mesmerized on the couch. He's a little scared of the scene in Cars where Mater and Lighting McQueen go "tractor tipping." He has had a great summer home with Matt and gotten lots of Daddy time. I dread Matt going back to work but the consistency and schedule are nice. Right now every day is different and that's hard to get used to. He's gotten more into "hiking" and we've taken him to the trail on various occasions and he loves to walk and walk and walk. He's definitely into walking more vs. riding in the stroller but he gets "tired" and then you end up carrying him home.
Okay so I've been neglecting this blog. Can you blame me? I'm pretty busy these days. Having my own business and two kids under two (okay now he's over two) but you get the idea... I couldn't resist posting these photos of Owen with the garden hose.
As Owen approached age two, it became obvious that this kid was going to give us a run for our money. He whined, he cried, repeat. He does things because he knows we don't want him to, he especially likes to tempt fate when you are holding Harper because he knows you have no hands to stop him... You find yourself getting so irritated and losing your "cool, calm and collected" self. You like to think you never yell at your kids, then you find yourself grabbing their arm and saying, "because we are going upstairs to change your diaper now... and dragging them upstairs..."
I have been hoping to find a great book about discipline and many "formal" methods have been suggested. I bought the Supernanny book, and the Magic 1, 2, 3 but none of that sat well with me. Afterall, I'm starting from scratch, and I felt like I should be able to mold this kid into a well behaved child simply by example. I had an interesting conversation with my friend Dara and she suggested this PATH program and the book is out of print but I subscribe to his "Daily Groove" digest emails. I haven't paid to be a part of his forum program, but I plan to.
When your child spills his milk for the 5th time of the day ask yourself? Is it really worth getting ANGRY over? Your child is 2 years old. They are looking for your reaction. If you simply clean it up (perhaps even have them help clean WITH you) and avoid the commentary... "this is the THIRD time I've had to clean up after you, son, and I'm sick of it, I can't tell you how glad I'll be the day you never spill your milk again...." they will stop doing it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow but they will stop and they will just come to a realization that spilling milk isn't that great. Scott's whole parenting approach (as I understand it) is focused on the parent experiencing power WITH your child rather than controlling your child through dominance. It's an interesting concept. Basically ruling with mutual respect. I like that. It's hard in the moment to center yourself, breath and NOT get angry but it's worth it. It's all about your reaction.
It's hard to cut your boy's hair. At least for me. I just loved it long and shaggy but it was getting TOO long and I kept meaning to make an appointment at the real hair salon to get some cute "California surfer" cut for Owen. Alas, the 10 minute Barber shop walk-in was too easy. He is crinkling his nose because some little hairs were getting in his face. He kept wanting to bring his hand to his face... anyway, so cute. Harper is 4 months in March and loves to take a bath with Owen and Daddy. She is the sweetest easiest baby minus the part about how she doesn't take a bottle, but HEY, perfection is a lofty goal.
I can hardly believe my boy is two years old. I hate to say that it goes fast, because to me each day seems slow but two years have passed since I delivered our boy and that does seem incredible. This birthday was a bit of a whirlwind. We decided to have a little pot-luck party over at our house and it was really hard to be a hostess. Harper seemed just a tad fussier and more needy during the party than usual but Owen seemed to have a great time. He kept saying all day "I want ma cake" or "I want to eat ma cake." Finally the time came when we sang the birthday song and he just kept lunging for the cake -- mouth first. Special thanks to Katrina of Sedona Bride who, stepped in like the great friend she is and shot some photos on my camera for me. It's so great to have a friend whom you can just hand the camera to and say, "can you shoot this?" (and KNOW they can handle it). Sometimes my life as a photojournalist is hard because you want to photograph everything but then you never get to participate! Yesterday I was "wearing" Harper in the Moby Wrap and it proved too hard to play photojournalist at the same time. Enjoy the photos of the kids. ~cameron~
HA HA. Like I know the answer to the title of this post. But seriously, I should give you the update on cloth diapers past the age of 18 months. Um, it gets a little old dealing with "adult" size, shape and yes you guessed it smelling poop on a daily basis. I kept wondering, "When does this potty training stuff begin?" because,
I'm READY!!!
So, being the cheap, I mean *green* mother that I am (Seriously the cat is out of the bag, I STILL don't have my compost bin over here. Can someone just drop that thing off? I used to be such a good com-poster. AH hem, being the *green* mother that I am, I asked about used potties (is that gross?) on my MOM'S Club North email listserve. I love this group ladies, if you are a Flagstaff Mom, it's a great way to network amoug other moms and swap stuff... errr, like used potties and find used cribs and all that on the cheap. I get so many bags of clothes from other mom's just dropped at my door and when we had Harper they arranged for 10 meals for me in the first two weeks. It was luxury. It's $25 a year, so it's a DEAL!
ANYWAY... I got one, for free. AND... I put it in the bathroom. Matt and I (and Tia Kate) talked endlessly about pooping, peeing and potties with Owen for months. We bought Once Upon a Potty (used of course) and read it (note: I changed some words in that book because I am just NOT calling it "pee pee and poo poo." I just call it what it is: poop and pee. No need for double cutesy words around here. Also, it's a penis folks, and that's what we call it. So we read Once Upon a Potty (just saw online that there is a DVD) and a Mom's club friend also gave me "Elmo's Potty" book and the more potty books and potty talk the better. We also let Owen come with us to the potty and talked about pooping. I mean this might sound weird, but there is no privacy when you have kids, people, it's all in the open, so just embrace it. He was very curious and I think that helped. We would talk about how big boys don't cry (HAHAHAAH) and big boys poop on the potty and little babies (ie: my new baby Harper) pees and poops in their diapers.
Let the brainwashing begin...
Starting at 20 months we had a lot of success with him peeing on the potty at the end of the day right before we changed his final diaper. He had been peeing on the potty just once a day for a truck sticker for about 6-8 weeks. We kept asking if he wanted to try pooping on the potty but he would always say "no" and get a little irritated. I figured we shouldn't rush him especially at this age. I kept reminding him if he did end up pooping, he would get a lollipop.
One day (around 21.5 months) Owen didn't stop chattering and didn't fall asleep for his nap. (this kid naps like a champ and he doesn't like his fragile schedule to be interrupted). So, it was easy to know something was wrong (also clue#2 was that he farted a lot of times when I was reading him stories before naptime). After 1 hour and 20 minutes of chatter but no sleep, I went into his room and said,
"Do you have to poop?" Owen: "YEAH" Mommy: "Oh, do you want to try pooping on the potty?" Owen: reluctantly, "Yeah"
I know a golden opportunity when it presents itself. I wanted to take a video of him but you'll read why I couldn't. Lucky for me Harper was fast asleep giving this pooping adventure my full attention.
So I put him on the potty and he says "Mommy come back" which I took to mean, GO AWAY!! So I did. He wanted his privacy and hey, even though the irony there is thick, I respected that. So my home office is on the landing right outside the bathroom and I just clicked around on Facebook nervously hoping he didn't poop on the floor or something. I kept checking back and he was just sitting there reading his books. On the third peek I saw him leaning over the wicker magazine basket in the corner making a grunting sound.
"OH SHIT" was really what I wanted to say, but instead I gather my most calming *mommy* voice and said,
"Owen, if you have to poop, go ahead and do it in the potty, would you like me to move your potty to this corner of the bathroom?"
Owen, "YEAH"
Mommy, "okay"
I'm thinking, "that was a close one." I check back in a few minutes and sure enough it was stinky in there and I could see he had finished his business. At this point he was having so much fun on the potty reading his books that he wanted to continue doing that... SO.... I let him enjoy this moment (15 minutes of it) as I figured rushing it could give him a bad experience. After he was done I made a BIG deal about it, exclaiming how proud I was and using my *outdoor voice* indoors. Telling him how badly I wanted to tell Daddy. I read him two stories, gave him a lollipop and put him down for a real late nap. He was content to sleep.
In the two weeks since then, he's done amazing. We are still taking it slow keeping the diapers on but he's pooped 10 for 11 tries in the potty. Last week we went to Las Vegas to visit my grandmother and brought the potty and he did all his pooping in it on that trip and last night we went to my sister's (Tia Kate) for dinner and he even pooped over there (oh yes, we brought his potty). I am looking for a portable potty. Anyone with ideas?
Honestly I keep meaning to read this book "Toilet Training in Less than a Day" but haven't had time. I think tomorrow we might go for the "no pants" training option and try to have him learn about when he has to pee to use the potty too. He is *sorta* holding it between diaper changes and then peeing in the potty as we now put him on the potty to pee about 4-5 times a day. He does like to put Mickey on the potty too. We have some Thomas the Train big boy pants and some pull-up style diapers but everyone tells me because we do cloth diapers it won't take long to train him fully.
A potty trained boy can go to preschool in the fall. That is our goal. Montessori preschool a few half days a week.
Harper is 3 months now and poor girl doesn't even have a dedicated blog post yet... it's coming but she is such a good baby, I hardly have a thing to talk about. Enjoy the photos of the kids. Here's a video that only a grandmother can love.... but stick it out you might laugh out loud. I did.
Posts
