potty

Look, no diaper!

| patmcg

According to Molly’s daily note from school today, “Molly put a lot of urine in the toilet after nap — it surprised and scared her”, apparently including some crying.  That must be a weird feeling the first time it happens!

Molly toilet
Molly enjoying her little toilet at home

This milestone comes after a few weeks of experimenting with the potty at school as well as the little plastic one at home, including looking at it, playing with it, pushing it around, sitting on it with a diaper on, sitting on it without a diaper, and occasionally proposing to use it as a container for her toys.

Molly's daily note
Molly's daily note

Time for pull-ups!

| patmcg

Molly has gotten very interested in ditching her diapers for the more grown-up and mature pull-up.  This is basically just a diaper, but she can pull it on and off by herself.  Many of the kids in her class are doing it, so it may be some positive peer pressure leading Molly to the pull-up.  So we are sending Molly yo school with pull-ups now.  Bye bye diapers!

Molly often calls her pull-ups “underwear” and seems to think they are real underwear.  She is somewhat interested in using the toilet, and sometimes even sits on her little started toilet, but to date we have not had to clean it out.

Molly begs to wear her pulls to bed at night, but that is the one time we are still requiring diapers.  We have a vague sense that a pull-up might not be as thick and durable as a diaper and might not last a whole night.  One step at a time, people!

Bye Bye Potty Seat, Hello Diapers

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Claire now uses the toilet exactly like an adult.  She has graduated from all props, including little her step stool and her toilet seat topper.  She just hops up on her tip toes, does her thing, and hops back down.

This new independence started almost exactly when we first came home with baby Molly.  Perhaps the arrival of baby Molly inspired Claire to demonstrate her maturity.  Or maybe Claire is just trying to drive home the irony that we are starting the whole potty training process all over again.  Yes, even as we clear the various toilet accessories out of our bathrooms, we are in the other room changing dirty diapers.

I Did a Poo!

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Claire did her first poo in the potty at home!

Right before her bath tonight, Claire got real quiet and just stood still, looking a little red in the face. This means she is about to poo.

I picked her up and set her on the toilet in our bedroom. After about two seconds, she said, “I’m done!”, which is pretty much the normal routine. But she obviously still had to poo, so I told her I would read a book to her if she would stay on the potty. She agreed, and I read her Goodnight, Texas twice. Around the end of the second reading, she did her poo and then got a happy smile on her face and said, “I’m done!”

Kit and I clapped and hollered and hopped aroound and told her we were so proud. She seemed a little surprised by all the attention. She has purportedly done this particular “trick” numerous times at school, I assume without receiving this kind of attention.

We went downstairs and picked out a special sticker for her potty sticker poster. Since this was an extra special case, we also gave her a little bit of lemon sorbet as a treat. For some reason, this ended up being called simply “flavor” later, as in, “I want a flavor!” Anyways, she liked it a lot and went off to bed proud and happy.

Claire has done the same trick a few more times, but usually in her pants. Afterwards, she sometimes asks for a sticker and “lemon flavor”, so maybe she is missing some of the point about using the actual potty. Or maybe it is just wishful thinking, and it can’t hurt to ask, right?

Potty Update

| patmcg

The potty training has been progressing slowly but steadily. Claire can use the potty, and apparently does at school, but she does not yet have confidence in her control.

Claire’s basic cry for help is, “I don’t want to pee!” The morning routine can involve 5 or 6 panicked trips to the potty, often running downstairs with shaving cream on my face or a mouth full of toothpaste. Dinners out often involve 3 or 4 trips to a smelly public bathroom. Sometimes we have to pull Claire out of the bath, slippery and covered in soap, to use the potty. We even have to make trips to the bathroom in the middle of story time right before putting her in bed.

Now, I don’t mean to complain or sound sour about this. Kit and I know this is all part of the process, and we all just have to soldier through. Part of the reason for this blog is to look back in a few years and remember the strange phases we went through with Claire and the little ways it affected our days.  (Ok, to tell you the truth, it is very tiresome.)

I Did a Tinkle!

| patmcg

Tonight, Claire took her first big step away from diapers.

This was the first time she did it at home, anyways. Claire has purportedly had some luck with using the potty at school, where she had been going diaper-less this week. Claire did have some accidents at school over the last few days, as proven by the wet shorts coming home with her in the evenings. But besides the wet clothes and several fruitless attempts at home, Kit and I had been pretty much in the dark about potty training. Tonight, though, Claire finally let us in on her potty training success.

After playing at the Abbott Avenue park for a while, we all headed to Dickey’s Barbecue Pit for dinner. At the restaurant, Claire started wiggling around and looking worried and then sort of screamed, “I don’t want to go pee-pee!” Kit took her to the bathroom for another fruitless attempt. Claire repeated this exercise a few minutes later, and this time I took her to the bathroom with no success. On the five-minute drive home, Claire worked herself up into a lather, screaming that she did not want to pee-pee.

We got home just in time for her bath, a now-dreaded routine which leaves Claire mad and me and/or Kit soaking wet from hold Claire in the bathtub. Interestingly, we had started to think Claire now hated baths because she was afraid of having an accident, as she had done a couple of times, when her daiper was off. As if to confirm our suspicions, Claire had recently started in on her same routine about screaming, “I don’t want to pee-pee!” during her baths.

But as always, we put Claire on the potty before her bath tonight. This time, after a couple of minutes, she declared, with a smile on her face, “I did a pee-pee!” Punctuating the point, I could hear a tinkle sound in the water. Kit and I jumped around and cheered and clapped, and Claire seemed real proud. We put a congratulatory sticker on the “My Potty Poster” that Noni had given us.

The bonus was the usual screaming and fussing was absent during her bath. It was just a relaxed, civilized bath. Afterward, Claire even wanted to use her fun green froggie towel, which she had not asked for in a long time, and she declared with a smile that she was Katie the Frog. It was the most relaxed I had seen her (and myself) for bathtime in weeks.

This is just the start of diaper-independence, and I am sure many accidents and challenges lay ahead, but at least Claire is on her way now.

Fear and Loathing in the Bathtub

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Not long ago, bath time was a fun and relaxing nightly routine. Claire played with her three little plastic dolphins in the bubbly, warm water. We listened to lazy music and ended up all clean and sleepy for bedtime.

Those days seem to have passed, at least for the moment. Bath time, especially since we moved to the new house in Dallas, has become a stripped down, sometimes frantic, usually unhappy affair. Gone are the bubbles; Claire does not want bubbles any more. And the favorite old “Sleepy” and “Moonlight” playlists that we had gradually worked to perfection on our iPod are no longer welcome; Claire prefers silence. The water is “too hot!” even if it is tepid. She cries and screams when we start the bath water, and she ends up running all over the house, screaming, usually naked, before we scoop her up and make her clean up. She protests, “I’m not dirty! I don’t need a bath!” The scene has at times devolved into some of the biggest fits she has ever had. We often just splash her off as she stands in the tub. She ends up going to bed mad and frustrated, but at least sort of clean. Mostly, we are trying to stick somewhat to the routine.

We have asked her why she doesn’t like baths, but she does not give us any real answer.  It could be related to potty training, as she has had a couple of “accidents” in the bath, and they freaked her out. Or sometimes it seems like she just does not want to go to sleep, and she knows darn well that bath time means bedtime. She just wants to keep playing, even though she is obviously tired.

Last night, we had a rare fun bath time. We played and splashed and laughed. She was happy as we got her into her pajamas and off to bed. Hopefully this is the start of a trend. All three of us could use some relief from the nightly bath trauma.