Wee wee wee, all the way home

Potty-training minutiae, you've been warned.

Today's been another accident-free day, with the crowning achievement of the day being A telling me in the parking lot of Phil's that he needed to make water, and me without keys or potty to say, "Okay, let's go into the restaurant or into the parking lot."

So I told him, "I'm sorry, we can't go to the potty right now. You can go in your pull-up if you need to." (We had him in Pull-ups for a late night errand run that might have run into bedtime.)

We get home and he is bone dry. Bone dry for a fifteen-twenty minute car ride. He held it. He held it. Wow! Wow wow wow.

And now he's complaining that he wants to wear his big boy pants at night. We're not quite ready for that. We told him when he's dry all night (which he is irregularly) he can have big boy pants for bed. But the end is in sight.

Potty training success

We've had a good twenty-four hours of no accidents, so keep your fingers crossed.

We even went to the Greek festival and ate enough flaming cheese and baklava to make me sick.

Now I'm waiting for C to come home (maybe, since he didn't answer his work phone) and for A's pasta to cool so I can give it to him and he can eat and go to bed.

But keep your fingers crossed for us. A whole day, no accidents, running to the potty and everything.

One week of the suck

The boy's breathing, which is good. The daddy is working massive overtime (still not home), which is bad.

I am tired and getting to the end of my patience. We had potty training again today with not enough nap and that was a bad combination. I'm not even sure at this point if the potty training will actually take, but I know leaving him in diapers will not help. I'm sick of doing all the laundry that potty training entails. I'm sick of doing three meals a day plus snacks (usually, Mistah C does breakfast and often dinner) and loading the dishwasher and emptying the dishwasher. I'm sick of feeling like the Feminine Mystique for a new century.

I don't feel like I get a lot of time to myself this week, and not a lot last week, and so now that I've a stretch with pretty much no creative/play/social time for Kim as grownup non-mommy person, I've decided mommies need our grownup time. I get really cranky without it.

Accidentastic

C came home at normal times for the last two nights and so our lives feel more normal. A is doing well. He had an exit developmental evaluation today, and he's doing great, actually. He had the Bayley developmental assessment today, and that tracked him as on target for all areas of development, including speech. (I know! Speech too!)

The doctor doing the test made two recommendations: one, that we keep him in preschool (which was like, duh, no kidding), and two, that we keep him in speech therapy once or twice a week to work on his articulation. She said the words, vocabulary, sentence structure, and syntax he has are all on target, but that he needs help learning to articulate. This is super news as far as we're concerned.

This all makes me wonder how the hearing test plays in.

Anyway, I felt confident enough (read: not too lazy) today that we went back to potty training, hard core, Supernanny style: underpants, no Pull-ups. (I would like Supernanny to get over to my house and clean up the resulting mess.) But I am resolved and stalwart and he will be potty trained.

Potty training progress

We had a day this week where A had a huge accident all over the floor (number 1). I called C to say, no more potty training. He's sick, I'm sick, you're sick, everyone's unhappy and cranky and potty training doesn't help.

So we back-burnered potty training.

And then... A wanted to sit on the little seat on the toilet. First just for fun, now consistently right after he's gone to the bathroom. He feels himself going and asks for the potty. He's doing this at preschool too, and while our nice neighbor lady watches him.

So this is progress. It's still pennies as reward here. Soon we'll be beating the urine to the potty, I'm sure.

Preschool decisions and potty training

We're approaching A's third (!) birthday, which is monumental in that it's the day his services like free preschool and speech therapy get turned off. Oh no! He's really thriving with preschool and speech, so it's hard for me to imagine his life without them.

In any case, we've just started potty training (although Daddy is the potty trainer of choice, so the rest of us have to get in line behind Daddy), which absolutely positively must be accomplished by three to get him into any preschool. We've established that he can stay at his current preschool (which was more reasonably priced than previously thought, which is good) and enroll in August, which is super and always an option. I have to research other options now.

Potty training is difficult. Really difficult. He's getting bribed with pennies (his current latest obsession, happily cheap) for sitting on the potty, but he hasn't quite made the how things work connection, and really, how do you teach someone how to urinate? The mind boggles.

Baby junk

Not that kind of junk.

We're trying to convince A that he really wants to be potty-trained. He's not keen on it, but we've got Lightening McQueen pull-ups to try and convince him that the toilet is super cool groovy. He has explained to me that the potty is for mommy and daddy but not him.

Anyway, we finally convinced him to sit on this potty without a diaper. We've had this potty since his birthday. This is the second potty we have, since after I foolishly followed the "let your child pick out a potty to make him feel invested in the process" advice, A picked out an Elmo toilet that talked to him in English and Spanish every time he pushed a button ("Muy bien! High five! Great job!"). After an hour, the bilingual Elmo potty disappeared back to the baby hellhole. I replaced it with a mute potty. The design of the potty included a "splashguard for your little boy," which ostensibly is supposed to route urine into the toilet without the child having to aim.

The stupid mute potty is too small. His baby parts did not natually fall underneath him into the bowl. Cramming his baby junk into the splashguard positioned his penis in a way that would ensure he would piss into his own eyes should the momentous day arrive when he urinated on the potty.

So potty #2 is a bust, headed for AmVets. Maybe someone with a skinny little girl child can use it.

This weekend, we went to IKEA and bought potty #3 for four bucks and everything seems to fit. God bless the Swedes.

I'm still not ready for potty training.