Pants II

Andrew just went to his dresser to fetch his own pants.  Then with minimal help from me, he laid them out on the floor and put them on by himself.

I'm having a "he'll eventually be able to go to college" moment.

(Of course, the reason he needed to go fetch new pants at 4:30 in the afternoon was because he was too involved in play to bother going to the potty.  But you know.  Baby steps.)

He also performed his first Class III scramble up some awesome red rock (The Golden Pyramid) down at South Valley Park down the road here.  So he had a big day.

Incidentally, Clara made about 90% of this climb too - I just didn't feel comfortable with her on the summit pitch.  They both were incredible, and I see much rock climbing and hiking in our future.

Pants

Mama: I see that you must have gone potty. And you didn't put your pants back on.
Andrew: Yeah. Sometimes big boys put their pants back on. And sometimes they don't.

Potty Training

You may remember that we had kicked around the concept of elimination communication starting around when Andrew was about 10 months old.  We put him on the potty occasionally and caught a few poops and some more pees, but mostly we were just pretty laid back about the whole thing. Then Clara was born and EC dropped way down on the priority list.  Then we hit the 18-month sleep all-around regression, and it dropped off the list entirely.

Well, I started to think about it a little bit around January/February time frame (21-ish months old), mostly because (a) I was starting to get over having two in diapers, and (b) Andrew's #2 diapers were super intense to change and clean.  Blech.  I was surfing one of the parenting forums that I frequent and ran across a plug for Oh Crap. Potty Training.  Her basic premises made a lot of sense to me: that there is no "ready, there is only "capable;"  that you just have to take away the diapers and see what happens; and that there's a window of opportunity between 20-30 months - after they have gained the coordination to go on the potty, but before they have reached the defiant, rebelliously independent stage.  Maybe more importantly, we had a couple of windows with no travel coming up, so that we could slide potty training in and not be on an airplane while learning how to hold it.

He was also showing some signs of "readiness":

• awareness of going/having gone and announcing either pee or poop by saying "stink"
• discomfort with having poop in the diaper and wanting to be changed promptly
• upset when poop makes a mess on the floor or in pants
• seeking privacy to poop

And so it was that we began on Friday, 8 March, so that I could be home with him for four whole days before handing him over to Maggie.  He was 22 months of age.  We took off the pants, took off the diaper and went naked bottomed on Day 1.  We "gave" all the diapers to Clara.  We caught a few pees midstream and said, "Oh you're peeing.  Pee goes in the potty, not on the floor."  By the end of the day he was getting the pee in the potty thing, and able to go when prompted and able to ask for the potty.  

On day 2, we went commando in pants.  A big thing with this method is that underpants feel too diaper-like and so they confuse the issue.  We had a few pee accidents, but mostly got the hang of it pretty quickly.  He didn't have a real poop until the third day, but we saw the grunting, and caught it in the potty - yay!  Everything seemed to be progressing.

After that, he seemed to get the peeing down really well.  Very few accidents.  Very good at responding to prompting, and even doing some self-initiating.  He did wet during nap every day, but I didn't want to confuse the issue by putting him in a diaper (even though he was still in a diaper at night), so we just decided to wash the sheets daily.  He didn't have any trouble peeing on public toilets - we had outings to Walmart, Costco, the grocery store, the park... no problem at all.

Poop, however, was another thing all together.  He just didn't want to seem to do it on the potty.  A few times he tried to get to the potty but ended up pooping on the floor right next to it.  Many times, he just didn't want to take a break from playing to go (in spite of watching the potty episode of Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood every single day: "If you have to go potty, STOP and go right away....").  That is, until Friday, 22 March - two weeks in.  

Clara had her 9 month well child checkup at the pediatrician, so we went to a park on that side of town.  We had never been to this park before - it was HUGE and had, like, 15 slides (Andrew's favorite!).  Andrew was so excited!  I got Clara settled on a picnic blanket with a snack while Andrew started to climb the nearest structure.  Before he could go down the first slide, he did his characteristic hunch-over-and-grunt.  "Andrew!" I said, "Hold it, hold it!!!"  But it was too late.  Full poop in the pants.  

I hefted both kids and limped with my still-weak broken ankle to the restroom, which was quite the hike.  We got him all cleaned up.  I told him, "You aren't in trouble, buddy.  But we need to go home.  When you poop in your pants, we have to go home.  If you put your poop in the potty, we can stay longer at the park." He was extremely upset.  He cried all the way home, "Slide! Slide!  Park - okay!!"  I calmly reiterated that we had to go home because he pooped in his pants.  

Finally it was like something clicked in his head and he screamed, "Potty!!!"  I was carrying the little Baby Bjorn potty chair in the back of the car just in case of emergency, so I pulled over and put it out.  He sat on it and squeezed out two little drops of pee.  I said, "It looks like you're finished," and tried to put him back in the car.  He arched his back and yelled, "NO!!!  Potty! Sit down!!!!" and sat back down, as if he was going to sit there until he could put some poop in the potty so we could go back to the park.  

The next day, it took four false alarms, but he put his poop in the potty.  Self-initiated, too.  He did not have any accidents other than naptime for the rest of the week.  

The big test came when we went to the zoo on Friday, 29 March.  He had no accidents.  I prompted him to pee twice and one time he asked to go and successfully held it until we could get to the potty.  Then the moment of truth - just after lunch, he gave me that sort of desperate, tense look and said, "Potty potty!"  I knew this was it.  We hurried to the nearest restroom, but it still took a couple minutes to walk there, and then we had to wait for a stall to free up.  When he sat down on the potty, he wasn't sure he could go.  I started to recite One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish, and it helped him relax enough.... for success!  A poop on a public potty!  

With that, I declared him daytime potty trained.  It was the day after he turned 23 months old.  

We are choosing not to night train at this time.  He wears a pull up to bed, and that's okay with everyone.  I'm sure the time will come when we're all ready to tackle that hurdle.  For now I'm just really proud of my big boy.

Items of note

Somethings worth recording, in no particular order:

(1) TMI about potties, perhaps, but whatever.  Last night while getting ready for bed, Andrew signed "potty."  I figured he was just stalling (he's been doing that lately), but I want to be consistent about reinforcing the potty so that we can get on with that business as soon as possible.  Plus, I had to go, so I thought we may as well.  We headed into the bathroom and Andrew sat down on his potty while I sat on mine.  I said, "Listen!  Mommy is going pee pee.  Can you go pee pee in the potty?"  And he said, "Yeah," and then proceeded to go!!  I was stunned!  He hasn't been too much interested in the potty, other than a place to read books while mommy or daddy goes.  But now that I think about it, he's been making the potty sign after he poops his diaper, so maybe all the little pieces of awareness are starting to come together.  Maybe we're closer to big boy pants than I thought!

(2) After getting a little frustrated by the newborn schedule of eat-wake-sleep-change-repeat that I've been following with Clara, I decided to feed her twice before trying to put her down for naps.  Almost instantaneously we've had longer naps (1.5-2hrs instead of 20 minutes) and a earlier bedtime (thank goodness!).  Hopefully this will continue and we can ride through the four month sleep regression.  I think we're in it because she's dropped her long block at night.  But if this is as bad as it gets, we can handle it.

(3) Today, Clara discovered how to pull the ring on her bouncy chair that plays the music, and now she won't let go of that ring!  She just pulls it over and over.  My little girl is growing up already!

(4) I've been obsessed with searching out the details of my family tree, now that Clara was so honored as to be the 7th generation to receive this beautiful China doll while we were in Michigan earlier this month:

In tracing the doll's history through the generations, making fascinating discoveries: a doctor (not just farmers), Canadians (oh my!), and a branch of the family that can be traced to colonial Connecticut.  I can't seem to stop searching for this information - to the detriment of my bedtime.  Oh the things you can find on the internet!

Finding all of this family information and records of times past make me feel a little silly about recording potty awareness and bouncy chair rings for posterity.  But I do hope that 200 years in the future, my descendants might find the minutiae of having kids still hasn't changed all that much, and maybe they'll enjoy having that in common with me.

Emphasis on "Communication"

This morning, after a weird, crappy night and a strange, sleepy morning, Andrew finally woke up happy.  When I went in to get him, he proudly presented me with his clean diaper, which he had removed, and then my nose called my attention to the pile of poop in the middle of the bed.  That's right, he had taken off his diaper in order to go in the crib.

I haven't read *that* much about Elimination Communication, but if that doesn't scream "I would rather not go in my diaper - can we try the potty more often?" I'm not sure what does.  The kid might not have any words, but he's very clear sometimes.

Incidentally, I see it as a sign of my total and complete transition to mommy-hood that I was only the tiniest bit annoyed at having to clean up a poopy bed.  Mostly I was pretty excited that he might be showing signs of awareness that could make our potty experiment more successful.  Yep, it's totally a mom thing.

Potty Time

Back when I was first reading about natural birth, natural parenting, baby-led parenting, attachment parenting, etc., I inevitably ran across the subject of elimination communication (EC).  I was like, "What?  Put a newborn on the toilet?  That sounds like so much WORK." And I summarily put it out of my head.

But.... the subject sort of crept back up on me.  A friend on a message board with a son about 3 weeks older than Andrew started sitting him on the potty a few times a day at around 10 months old.  Not to really potty "train," per se, but more to familiarize and normalize the activity.  "This is where we go pee and poo, and it feels better to sit here than wear it in a diaper."  Trying to hold a newborn over a toilet still sounds stressful to me, but an older infant who can sit up by himself?  That sounds like it's worth trying.  Not to mention, if it leads to even slightly earlier potty training eventually, or even just less diapers, with soon-to-be two way way under two, how can I argue?

So we picked up copies of "Diaper Free Before 3" and "Diaper Free Baby" from the library, picked up a couple of Baby Bjorn potties, and tried sitting him on it fairly (but not terribly) consistently when he wakes in the morning, after nap, and when he goes to bed.  Within a week he had peed on the potty for the first time, and boy was that exciting!  It was after nap (which to this day, which is when we usually catch it).  He was 10.5 months old.  And he's been going every once in a while after his naps for the past month now.

And for the past month, whenever I hear so much as a fart, I have been running to put him on the potty, in hopes of demonstrating to him how much pleasanter it is to poop there instead of in one's pants.  But no luck so far.  I've thought that first thing in the morning would be a good time to catch him, because that's his one really regular time.

Well,. daddy had the honors this morning.  He heard the farts during the first morning diaper change and decided to give the potty a shot.  And voila!  Success!  I am sparing you and the internet the picture. (Oh yes, there is one.  We are very proud.)

I'm so pleased with how this is going.  It's easy and low-key.  There are no accidents or huge messes, because we just aren't pushing very hard.  It's just introducing him to the idea, and again... if he gets the hang of it sometime between now and two years old, so much the better!