potty training

The Zoo

/ Shane / 3 Comments

On Saturday, we met a friend from college and went to the zoo. Going into it, Evie had some pretty high expectations: she wanted a lion to “roar at her” and to have a monkey “give her a stick”. 50% of those expectations were met.

The highlight of the trip for Evie was riding on the carousel, seeing the monkeys, and seeing a llama “pee-pee and poo-poo outside”. She was a little frightened on her first trip on the carousel, but by the 3rd rotation or so, she was loving it. “More music!” she demanded when the ride was stopping. She wanted to go right back on as soon as it stopped, but we did some other stuff and then came back. As we were nearing the carousel she was straining ahead so hard and bouncing with excitement, I was afraid she would hurt herself! As for the monkeys, I knew she was enjoying them at the time, but I didn’t realize how much until she was recounting to us what she had seen and every other thing was “More monkeys!” Like, “Monkeys, a lion, more monkeys, a carousel, more monkeys, etc.” As for Sara and I, we were just thrilled that a gorilla was sitting just a few feet away obviously enjoying a big piece of broccoli. Looks like we have a good tool to use to get her to eat her broccoli!

Now, the highlight of the zoo for me was the lion exhibit. Normally the lions just sit around doing nothing. You could easily replace them with a fake lion or at least an animatronic one and nobody would even notice. Well, not this time! As we watched, the male lion picked a fight with a female lion including rolling around on the ground and roaring.  It was AWESOME! And Evie didn’t seem to care much, even though roaring was something she specifically wanted to see. She was more interested in sitting on a bench. I guess she’s not old enough to realize that seeing lions fighting isn’t something you see everyday. The tiger was pretty rad too as he ran and jumped all around and trying to fish his toy out of the water. On a whole, way more active than I have ever seen these big cats.

As far as the potty training, it has been going great. We were pretty worried about the zoo, since we would be gone from the house for so long, but she had NO accidents. This even included us running from the monkey house and searching for a bathroom, and she held it the entire time. We were very impressed.

Since then, however, we seemed to suffer a setback. She just doesn’t want to go on the potty. She knows she has to go, she asks to go, but when she gets there and sees the potty, she changes her mind. This is repeated over and over because she knows she has to go, so she keeps asking to go. After a while of not going, she will have an accident. She really can’t help it, she just has to go so bad. I’m not sure what happened to cause this backlash of her not wanting to sit on the potty and therefore I don’t really know what to do about it. I’m hoping we can just get through until we pass this phase and then it will get better. Any suggestions?

Potty Training

/ Shane / 5 Comments

Let me just start by saying WHAT a weekend. I had no idea that potty training was so exhausting!

A lot of parenting books talk about potty training when your child is “ready”. These days a lot of kids don’t potty train until they are 3 or even 4. Obviously every kid is different, but it was very clear that Evie was ready, even though she’s not even 2. We bought a potty ages ago and encouraged her to sit on it whenever she wanted to. She went a few times by coincidence right away, but it had been a long time since she has done anything. Mostly she just sits and has us read books to her. However, she recently went on the potty intentionally, so that was one indicator. She also began telling us when she went or was going poo poo in her diaper so we could change her right away, which was another pretty clear sign. So, we decided not to make any plans for the long weekend and just see how it went.

We approached it the same way we’ve approached every aspect of parenting; like hardcore researchers. Sara read everything she could find on the subject including webpages, discussion groups, books from the library, etc. She can tell you the pros and cons of any potty video, type of potty seat, books about potties as well as the various methods of potty training. After reading extensively, she gives me maybe the top 5 or 6 books and webpages and then I read those. This system works well for us because I think there are all kinds of viewpoints on this stuff, some of them conflicting, and I think you need to have all the information available so that you can pick and choose what makes sense for you and your family. If you just pick one method and stick with it, you never know A) if there is a better system out there and B) if it is going poorly, you have nothing else to try, no plan B.

So, Sara was home with her on Thursday, but the plan was that I would start it on Friday so that we would have one of us (me) that was with her continuously the entire time, Friday through Monday, for consistency’s sake. So we began talking it up to her, saying things like, “On Friday, we won’t be wearing diapers anymore!” and “On Friday you can wear your new Elmo underwear!” etc. However, all the talk must have sunk in because on Thursday evening she demanded to go on the potty. I guess we were right about her being ready, because she had 4 pee pees and 1 poo poo vs. only 1 accident! Most of our success was due to Evie’s instant love of M&Ms which were reward enough to make her do *anything* including pee pee on command. When we went to bed on Thursday we were really riding high! We never expected so much success and we just couldn’t believe how easy everything had gone. 

Never count your chickens before they’re hatched.

On Friday, we began in earnest the plan we had worked out. Evie would wear her “big girl” Elmo underwear all day except for her nap. In addition to lots of praise and excitement, Evie could pick  prize from the prize bucket every time she went on the potty. Concurrently, we would set a timer for 15 minutes. If she was dry when the timer went off, she could have an M&M. If not, no biggie, but she would have to wait another 15 minutes for an M&M. I thought this last piece was especially brilliant because, yes you want her to go in the potty, but you also want to teach her about keeping herself dry and holding it in.

The plan looked great on paper, but it quickly went south. She wouldn’t sit on the potty for anything. You read these different methods for potty training and people say, “Oh I sit her on the potty every 20 minutes until he goes.” Sounds good, but this is not an infant, if she doesn’t want to sit somewhere she ain’t sitting. It’s like trying to hold a weasel in a sweater. And because she wouldn’t sit, the whole reward system we worked out was nullified. I wasn’t going to force her down on the potty with her screaming bloody murder because I didn’t want to give her toilet issues or something. (Side note, do you think there was ever a point in history when it was common for people to yell, “Bloody murder! Bloody murder!” The phrase has to come from somewhere.) The 15 minute timer went okay except that she wanted those M&Ms so bad that she would demand them before the timer was up. When I didn’t give them to her, she would have an absolute tantrum. There was also an incident where the timer went off and when I got the bowl down she snatched two M&Ms and stuffed them in her mouth instead of just one. I made her give one back and that was the fit to end all fits. So, by the time Sara got home we had many screaming fits and about 6 consecutive accidents on the floor, vs. zero pee pees in the potty. I was not only worn out from fighting with her all day (and the fact that she gets up at 5:30 every morning) but also, it takes a surprising amount of energy to shadow her all day long and watch for signs that she has to go. Evie was worn out too. The only part that could be considered a success about the whole day is that none of her accidents were on the carpet!

Now the interesting thing is that, once Sara came home Evie had a couple of successful potty runs. This was quite perplexing, not to mention deeply depressing in terms of my parenting skills! We’ve rehashed the disastrous Friday a couple of times and we have a number of theories. First off, there are a lot of things she will do for Sara that she just won’t do for me. She is a definite mama’s girl. Second off, it could be that Friday was just an adjustment period and it had to happen like that no matter who was home with her; it just happened to be me. Third, many of the things we tried that day we ended up ditching going forward, such as the timer and M&Ms. It just seemed to cause trouble and not really gain us much. So it could be that the techniques we tried on Friday didn’t work well for her. In other words, it was a learning day for us as much as for her. Or Fourth, maybe I just wasn’t very good at it. Who knows.

Not that it mattered very much, because on Saturday we turned it all around. I’d say she went in the potty about 30 times vs. about 3 accidents (really only 1 that went on the floor). Maybe it was because Sara was there, maybe it wasn’t, but I was just so happy that it didn’t turn out like Friday that I didn’t care! It was a huge rousing success, even if she was going the teeny tiniest amounts about every 45 minutes.

Like I said, we dropped the timer and M&Ms and we focused more on, “What is your body telling you?” We still had to follow her around and watch her like a hawk and throw in a couple of, “are you still dry?”‘s now and again. Also, we sort of let her take the lead on what kind of reward she wanted the next time she went. Sometimes it was an M&M, sometimes it was a sticker, sometimes it was to water the plants. Whatever works! It seemed more motivating to her when she got to pick.

Sunday went even better. We still had a lot of success, but she was going every couple of hours instead of every 45 minutes. We even made a couple of ventures out of the house, to the garden and the close park, and she was okay. Sara wanted to try her nap without a diaper, but that didn’t go so well, so we’ll stick with the diaper for her nap for a while. I think she went something like 26 hours in between accidents.

Today we ventured even further out of the house. She had an accident at the garden, but she went 3 times on the regular potty at the museum! We were pretty worried about that, but it actually worked out okay. She was really excited about it and is looking forward to more potties to try.

::Whew:: This is a long post, but believe me, the actual experience seemed longer still. I have to say though, it went relatively smoothly and it could have been a lot, lot worse. I’m knocking on wood, but I think at this point we have this one in the bag!

Evie Update Monday

/ Shane / 1 Comment

“What color is Evie’s hair?”
“Blonde”
“What color is mommy’s hair?”
“Grey!”*

*Disclaimer, Sara is forcing me to write in here that she does not actually have any grey hair.

And P.S., it’s my blog and I can write grey with an ‘e’ on it like a filthy redcoat if I want to! Take that world!

Over the weekend we got our garden all set up. We bought our plants from the gardens of Gethsemane – no joke, that was the name. It’s not as good as the garden of eat’n’, but I was still chuckling over it for a long time. It took Sara and I about 3 hours in the garden and another hour or so on the back porch, but everything looks beautiful. Looks like we’re going to have even more stuff than last year, as every square inch of our garden is accounted for, including plans for what goes in when certain things are done.

Evie went on the potty for what I think can be counted as the first time. She has gone a few times before, when she was younger, but I think this was the first time where she did it consciously, knowing what she was doing and why. That’s a big step. We’re not really potty training her per say, but we do let her sit on it whenever she wants to. Usually she will sit forever, but never go. So hopefully she will start to do this more and more and then we can try to potty train her for real. It certainly would be nice to be able to leave the house without all the diapers, etc.!

Sara found an article that says morning sickness increases the chance your child will have a high IQ. She thinks that people are just saying that as a consolation prize for the people who have a rough time with morning sickness, but anecdotally I will say that Sara had really, really bad morning sickness and Evie is really, really smart. You be the judge.

Since I began with a funny story about Sara, I feel I should end the same way; bookend-like. The other night I was sleeping blissfully when Sara forcefully pressed her arm against mine and yelled triumphantly, “They’re finally together!” I woke up rather confused and looked at her, but she wasn’t awake. I guess I’ll always wonder what the heck she was dreaming about.