Tuesday, July 24, 2012

He Knew and I Didn't Listen

This potty training thing is an interesting time for everyone of late.  My daughter is too young to do more than practice and get into the routine of using it.  My son is old enough to begin to understand what needs to be done and how to communicate it.

He's got the word, "potty" down.  He says it all the time.  He knows, "poop" and "pee" and he can explain that he's gone in his pants.  He likes to sit on the potty, see if anything has happened in the potty, remove the insert and dump any contents (that he has yet to make) into the toilet and then flush the toilet.  He even likes to wash his hands afterwards, which he needs after all the touching and checking around he's done during the process.

I think we're getting places.  I also think we have some distance to go before we not only save some diapers, but make less laundry.  At this point, we're at (I hope) the maximum time expended and clothing soiled in order to make potty-progress.

This is the, "training" phase.  The phase that requires a regular schedule at home and consistent practices.  After breakfast he gets put into training pants.  They are cotton and fairly thick, but they are easily made wet by a boy.  Wet and down the leg, oh fun.  Any time he says, "potty," "poop" or "pee" we ask if he needs to go and even if he says, "no" we encourage him to go.

He loves potty time.  Likes the books, likes talking to you and the process.  But not much happens.  Sometimes, like this morning, we went to the potty after breakfast.  Put on training pants.  Pants were drenched in twenty minutes and he didn't care.  So we went back to the potty and talked about what you do when you need to pee.  Second pair of pants.  These he realized he peed in, about ten seconds too late and made a sad cry, upset sound and looked at me.  So back down to the potty with praise for noticing and caring this time.  Third pair of training pants on and back upstairs (glad to find his sister was still playing happily) and five minutes later he starts saying, "potty... potty."   I say, "yes, we just went to the potty."

And I should have known better.  When in training, and the child indicates they need to go, you always go, even if it's five minutes later.  And I didn't listen.  So we went back down and changed into training pants number four.

But I told him I was proud of him for realizing he needed to go potty before he went.  That's the first time I've seen him do that.  We think he says, "potty" a lot when he's just gone in his pants.  It's hard to tell sometimes.  The ability to know before you go and have control over it is a big step.

Next time, I'm going to listen to him, even if I've gone up and down the stairs twelve times.


The Big Boy Update:  Bowl.  Vacuum.  Spoon.  More please.  Bye daddy.  I'm failing on listing words of the day he learns.  Of note today, he is just learning to put more than one word together.  He said, "more please" and "bye daddy."   I should state that he says lots of things in a row, full conversations.  But they're not in English.  We've tried to get him to say two words he knows, such as, "more" and "please" together, but he hasn't gotten it until recently.  Today when he said "more please" for some animal crackers we realized he was getting it.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Broccoli.  I thought it might have been a fluke when we gave her some broccoli last night and she chewed and chewed and seemed to be loving it.   She loves to gnaw on anything and she loves feeding herself.  After feeding her her main meal for dinner, I tried some broccoli, from the refrigerator, from last night, cold.  She couldn't get enough.  She ate as much as she could get into her mouth with her tiny two teeth while we ate dinner and cleaned up.  Later, after her bath, she pulled up at the tub and I looked over to see her gnawing on the edge of the tile.  I'm all for roughage, but that's going a bit too far.  We went to find a teething ring in short order.

Fitness Update:  I decided to get a bike after riding my husband's some and then taking my son around with me with the baby bike seat on the back.  I picked the bike up this afternoon and my husband, son and I went for a quick ride around the neighborhood after dinner with my son on the back of my bike.  I'm looking forward to more rides with him and my daughter too in the future.  Also, the bike has a bell.  It goes, "ding ding."  It's great

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