All night long

Yesterday, I read a post by another blogger about her efforts to get her son, whose twin sister has been potty trained for a while now, to make it dry through the night.  I'm not sure how old her son is, but since this is something we've tried and failed with Oliver, I read the post and the comments with great attention.  I then ordered a few cloth training pants for Emmeline, who will remove the cloth diapers (that have snaps on them) and only wants to wear Pull-ups, which are both expensive and wasteful.  I also devised a scheme, which I have now undertaken.

Last night at dinner, I told Oliver he was going to bed in underwear.  "Why?" he asked.  A sentiment that Wes quickly echoed.  

"Because you're a big boy," I said.  "And big boys go to sleep in their undies and then wake up when they need to go pee."  For the rest of the evening, I talked with him about how we would go potty right before bed, then again right before I went to bed, and then how if he woke up and needed to pee he would jump up and get on the potty, or if he had an accident, yell for mommy to come and help him.  I thought it was worth a few days of laundry to give this an honest effort.

So he peed when we got on pajamas around 7:30.  He peed again when he went to bed a little after 8.  I took him, successfully, around 11:30 when Wes and I went to bed.  And then, this morning, Wes jumped up out of bed at 5:30 and went upstairs, where Oliver was on the toilet and very proud of himself.  "Guess what, dad?  I went to sleep in my undies and I am all dry."  Wes gave him a high five.  Ollie peed, went back to bed, and less than twenty minutes later was yelling downstairs: "Hey guys, I pooped."  (At what age my children will use the facilities without announcing it, I'm not sure, but I will throw a party at my house on that day.)  I got up, gave him a high five, and helped him get cleaned up.  Another twenty minutes later, he was calling down again.  And then the whole house was up.  (Which explains why, as I type this upstairs, I can hear him fussing at Wes over dinner.)

So one night dry.  We'll see how it continues to go.

As for Emme, she spent the day in cloth training pants, underwear/diaper insert combos, and Pull-ups.  I put her on the potty every 15-45 minutes, depending on whether she goes on the toilet, and we've even been recording when she's wet or goes on the toilet, in the hopes I can figure out when she normally needs to go.  My mother-in-law spent the day with the kids while Wes and I were car shopping, and evidently Emme spent a decent part of the afternoon digesting the many blueberries she ate last night at dinner, mostly (but not completely) in the toilet.  

So we're off and running -- small steps towards two in underwear, and one who does not require Cars-themed Pull-ups at night.  Wish me luck!

Here's the poop

Emmeline is making progress on the potty.  A little while ago I started setting her on the frog potty that we have, and lo and behold, she went a couple of times.  But she still wasn't showing much awareness, so I didn't force things.  A few weeks later, I tried again, and we had more success -- and this time she seemed to understand what was happening.  Since then she's gained an awareness of her need to have a bowel movement.  She can usually tell us when she needs to go (though it doesn't always mean she'll do so once on the potty), and she usually produces.  She's even gone at school a few times.  She will pee on the potty, but it's entirely happenstance.  A few times, she's cried after going in the regular toilet, though other times she's surprised by the splash and makes this hilarious face or claps.  And she has made the switch to the regular toilet.  I don't know if she realized that every one else is using the regular toilet or what, but she doesn't want to sit on the frog potty.  Furthermore, she doesn't really want to interrupt breakfast to go.  She has on more than one occasion sat eating Cheerios from a bowl, her milk on the stepstool next to her.  Her desire to be a "big kid" in terms of her elimination extends even further to her diaper-wear.  This weekend when I laid her down for a nap, she absolutely threw a fit because she had a cloth diaper on instead of a pull-up.

Oliver, in poop-related news, went through an extended bout of constipation, but a mix of prune juice, lots of raisins, and eventually some Miralax took care of that.  I am still dealing with poops in the morning in his pull-up, but it seems like forcing him to try and go before bed just made him resistant, bringing on the constipation. I guess every kid eventually learns to stay dry at night!

In other poop news, this morning I found a pile of bunny poop in the middle of my walkway to the garage.  Seriously, I'm up to my ears in poop. 

See one, teach one

Any chance I can get the big one to potty train the little one?

And then a first for #2

One day after Emme used the frog potty for the first time, she had her first poop!  I put her on it right after she got up this morning, once again while Oliver sat on his seat, in the hopes that she might have a pee.  Not long after she sat down, she started going.  At first I thought it was pee, but when I looked in, I saw that she'd pooped.  I think it surprised her as much as it did me. 

So still probably not the clear start of anything regular, but a first nonetheless.

A first for everything

We got home late tonight from a work function for Wes -- after 8pm, which for Emme is at least an hour later than she usually goes to sleep.  Her diaper was pretty dry, and she had some gas, which made me think she might need to poop.  So I set her on the frog potty while Oliver did his business at the same time.  And don't you know it, Emme peed in the potty for the first time.  Seventeen months, two weeks.  I'm not sure she has any comprehension about what she did, and just like with Oliver when he started, I seriously doubt her diaper-free days are very near.  (Oliver's first pee on the potty was about 21+ months, and he wasn't in underwear all day until 27 months.  That said, I did a very "wait and see" approach, so I didn't really hurry him along.)  Nonetheless, it's exciting, and yet another reminder that our baby is growing up.

Drying out

I think we may be making some progress with Oliver in terms of nighttime potty training.  He's been dry during the day, and even naps, since just before Emmeline was born.  It was great timing, and once he started wearing underwear, he pretty rarely had an accident.  (He came home from daycare in different shorts one day last week, and when I asked how he had an accident, it was revealed: he had tried to pee in the toilet standing up.  Evidently, he's been studying Wes in the bathroom.)  Nighttime was a different story though.  He was always wet in the morning, usually having pooped as well as peed in the pull-up.  I didn't know what to do about it.  When I talked to our pediatrician about it at his three-year well-child visit, she pretty much said it was developmental, and like daytime potty-training, some kids did it earlier than others.  So I let it go.

But then one week we had to wash the sheets several times because the pull-up was so overwhelmed with pee that it leaked.  Not fun.  We kept telling Ollie that he could get up at night and go pee in the toilet if he needed to, or at least in the morning when he woke up, but he never did (even though he would do it at nap time).  He's a really active kid, so I'm not keen on cutting him off from drinking.  He gets either watered down juice or plain water, so it's not like he's chugging down milk or something else. I figure if he's drinking, he's thirsty.

Last week, I decided to try something new.  Oliver usually goes to bed between 7 and 8pm.  Wes and I usually go to bed between 10 and 11pm.  So now, just before we go to bed, one of us goes up, picks him up out of bed, and sits him on the toilet.  Most night he pees (and not a little).  The first night we did this, he woke up with a slightly damp pull-up.  The last two nights, though, he's been completely dry.  He doesn't always seem to remember even getting up at night, so he's really proud of himself for being dry.

So imagine our excitement when this morning, around 6:45, Wes and I heard him leave his room and get on the toilet to pee.  We actually high-fived each other in bed, and then went up to make a big fuss about what a good job he did getting up to pee in the toilet.

I think my plan right now is to give this a try for several weeks.  If we get into a spell of dry pull-ups, we can try to drop the late-night potty trip to see if he learns to get up himself when he needs to go.  I'm not starting him in underwear until we've had a solid run of dry nights, but I'm hoping we can get there by summer.  Costco will be disappointed to hear we're close to being done, but I, for one, will not!

Adventures in Potty Training, and Wow!

Yesterday morning, Oliver gave my mother a hard time and somehow ended up in underwear.  He got up from bed dry (which I think had more to do with a lack of fluids than any restraint on his part), so she put him in the underwear to induce him to pee in the potty.  We sent him to daycare with spare pants and underwear to a supportive but somewhat skeptical classroom teacher.  I picked Oliver up at almost 5pm and found him, to my surprise, in the same pants and underwear.  He had a lot of juice when he got home and then, despite my best efforts, ended up wetting himself twice -- the first time quite a bit before I could get him to the potty, the second time just dampening the underwear -- and so we switched back to a pull-up for the rest of the evening (which stayed dry until bedtime).

I let him wear underwear to school again today.  I don't know if this will continue, but he's really excited about the underwear (Disney and Dora the Explorer themed, none of which he recognizes, but still) so we'll use it to our advantage.  Here's hoping my couch and rug make it through in tact.

Adventures in Potty Training, And so on

I'm happy to say that Oliver is doing really well with potty training.  After such a hit and miss beginning, then regression, I'm excited to say that he's getting close to the point of spending his waking hours in underwear.  We've been doing pull-ups during the day so that he can use the bathroom easily, and most days we go through one or two, so I don't feel as bad that he's not in the cloth.  He still wears a cloth diaper to bed and sometimes for his nap if he hasn't peed recently before going down.  He didn't do as well at daycare on Thursday and Friday, I heard, but I figured the transition back after being gone for a week would be a little challenging, especially since my parents had just left on Thursday, and he loves being with them so much.

Ollie has a pretty good process.  He can go into the bathroom, get his pants and pull-ups down, sit and pee, and get all the way to the point of needing the basin rinsed without requiring any help.  Granted, he normally gets supervised anyway.  He rarely initiates the potty himself, but he goes very quickly after being told to sit down if he needs to, so as long as I watch the clock and his fluid intake, he stays dry all day.  Very often for two hours or so, and even sometimes through naps.

Pooping has been the biggest challenge.  He almost always tells me right after he's gone.  And the last few days he's been constipated, with really small, hard stools.  But then tonight, about ten minutes after he'd peed in the potty, he said he needed to potty again.  So I took him in, set him down, and went back to the kitchen and told him to yell for me when he needed.  Five minutes later, he was still sitting there, pretty red cheeked.  Mom went in and confirmed that she thought he was trying to poop.  And a few more minutes later, the smell in the bathroom indicated our suspicions were correct.  He's clearly started to loosen up, and he'd finally -- FINALLY -- pooped in the toilet, not to mention having initiated the visit.  Lots, lots of excitement, I tell you.

So we're not "there" yet.  I want a few more days like this before I risk my couch and rugs to underwear.  And his daycare teacher has said she's willing to try them at school with him when we're ready to do it both places.  It's going to have to stay prominently on my radar if we don't want to lose ground when the baby comes, but I think he could be close to being daytime trained.

Yay, Oliver!

Adventures in Potty Training, And so forth

Oliver had his best day of potty training yet yesterday.  At bedtime, we took off the same pull-up we'd put on him when he woke up.  He got a cloth diaper at naptime, when he often gets very wet, and he did poop in it, but the rest of the day he peed in the potty.  It was very exciting!  Today has been more of the same but not quite as good.  He's had two poops.  He did get up from his nap dry, but then he wet his diaper while he was playing in the snow and garage with Wes.  Regardless, we're seeing real progress -- no doubt just in time for serious regression when the baby gets here (but I hope not!).  When I went upstairs to get him this morning, he looked at me (with his turtle slippers on) and said, "Frog potty?"

Adventures in Potty Training, Continued

"Nobody knows the troubles I've seen..."

Oh, he knows

There is no question in my mind that Oliver knows exactly what happens on the potty.  If there had been, it would have been answered this morning when I said, to no one in particular while walking through the kitchen, "Mommy needs to go potty before we leave for school."  Oliver walked over to the bathroom, opened the door, lifted the lid on the toilet, and motioned for me to sit down.  Then stood there and waited for me.  (I would've made him leave, but, well, I stand right to him when he sits on the potty.)

Adventures in Potty Training, Week 2

Last night, he told the babysitter he had to poop (after evidently passing some gas), then pooped on the potty.

This morning, he said "Yes!" when Wes asked him if he needed to go potty.  Then he sat down and peed.

Adventures in Potty Training, Week 1

Monday:  Ollie got underwear on shortly after getting home.  I think he stayed dry for a little while, but then, after dinner while I was washing the dishes, he disappeared from our view for a few minutes.  Wes found him pretty wet but not dripping and rushed him to the potty.  He stripped him down, gave me the dirty clothes, and I went upstairs.  On my way back down, I noticed some small brown things on the floor and the dog very interested.  "His, or hers?" I asked Wes, gesturing towards the dog.  Wes thought it was pieces of dog bone, but upon carting it to the trash -- and ultimately the toilet -- realized it was not dog bone.  Further investigation led to discovery that there was a full bowel movement in his underwear.  Not sure if pooping in the underwear is a step forward from only going in the diaper or a step back from going in the potty ("not a raisin"), but we are getting more tuned in to his signals each day.

Tuesday: According to his teacher, Ollie peed in the potty at daycare after waking up dry from his nap.  For this, he received a stamp of a zebra on his left hand.  He got underwear on soon after getting home, then peed all over them about 1 minute later.  He changed into more, then put on a diaper to go to the car wash with Wes.  During dinner, he made the call, and I took off a still-dry diaper and peed on the toilet.  He changed back into underwear.  While playing in the living room after dinner, he says, "Poop," but when I ask him if he needs to go potty, he says "no."  Shortly thereafter, I hear some grunting and he's a little wet.  I get him on the potty, thinking we missed a chance, but several minutes later -- after some real focus and determination -- he poops in the potty!  Complete bowel movement.  (Very, very smelly.)  Big celebration.

Wednesday: Wes was on duty alone, so Oliver stayed in his underwear while they took the car to the car wash.

And so went the rest of the week.  Short afternoons at home, and little time in underwear.  Today (a week later), he asked to sit on the potty twice and actually removed his pants and diaper once by himself to do it.  We're trying.  It's just going to take some time.

Potty Training Box Score

Pees in the potty: 2 1/2 (2 self-initiated)
Poops in the potty: 1 ("not a raisin")
Pees in underwear and not in the potty: 1 1/2 (the other half of what got in the potty)
# of puddles cleaned off the floor: 1
# of times I asked Oliver if he needed to go potty: I lost count
Oliver's favorite part of potty training so far: Saying (and waving) bye-bye to the pee or poop as we flush it down the big potty

Update (7:03 PM): Add one to pees in underwear and puddles cleaned off the floor.  He was in the bedroom with Wes, who was still waking up (coming off an overnight shift), and I heard the telltale grunts from the other side of the door.  Unfortunately, he had gone quite a bit on the floor.  Fortunately, he wasn't in bed with Wes when he did it.  He's back in a diaper for the rest of the evening with lots of asking if he needs to go potty.

A naked G is a dangerous thing

This morning, Wes and Ollie took a shower together after putting in several hours out in the yard.  Wes let him run around naked while he got dressed.  He does this often when he's supervising Ollie after a bath or shower.  I've been nervous recently though when Wes puts Ollie on a bed or lets him on rugs while he is naked.  Ollie doesn't have seemingly any awareness of when he is about to pee or is even peeing.  So when I saw him run into our closet while I was showering, I was especially nervous.  Oliver likes to go "hide" behind my clothes sometimes, which mostly annoys me because it wrinkles and filthifies my clothes (yes, it's a word...that I just made up).  But today, he was also naked.  And had had a lot to drink this morning while out in the sun.

And sure enough, Wes went in to get him and came out only after a bit of a delay.  And with a look of shame on his face (Wes, not Ollie).  Oliver had evidently chosen the corner of the closet as the most appropriate location to pee.  Wes used the same cleaner we use for Lucy's "accidents" to help get it out, but it also wasn't the volume Lucy usually produces.

Needless to say, Wes is being a little more vigilant when supervising a naked Ollie.  And this, combined with Oliver having twice removing both shorts and diaper this morning, only further reinforces that he really should potty train.  Lucy, on the other hand, is sleeping soundly on her bed, reveling in the fact that someone got in trouble today for peeing in the closet -- and for the first time, it wasn't her.

On potty training and time outs

We've been working the last few weeks on potty training.  It seems to happen a lot on the weekends, when we tend to stay home rather than go out, and in the morning when it's a bit cooler.  Usually we'll get up on Saturdays, and I put underwear on Ollie.  Then he has breakfast, and we spend the morning outside while I pull weeds or something.  I take out water for both of us, his frog potty, and a few books.  And then every 20-30 minutes, he sits on the potty.  Last Saturday, we did just this.  He got up around 7:30am, and he sat on the potty almost every 20-30 minutes for the next four hours.  Did he pee in the potty?  No.  Did he pee in his underwear?  No.  I, naturally, used the bathroom at least two or three times, but Oliver -- bone dry.  He drank water.  He ate a normal breakfast, including a glass of milk, and then drank water while we were outside.  But he did not pee.  Finally around 11:30am, I caved.  I was hot and tired and not feeling especially well, and I wanted to go inside.  And while I know I might eventually have to go this route, I'm just not ready to let him have his run of the house in underwear.  I've already spent too much time cleaning pee off my rugs.  So I put him in a diaper -- which he soaked within the next 30 minutes.  It's possible that this is a good sign -- that Oliver understands not to pee in the underwear (unlikely, but possible) but doesn't understand to pee in the potty.  It's also possible that this is the first of a million setbacks with potty training.  I want the kid to potty train.  I really do.  But I'm not sure I know what I'm doing, and I'm not sure I'm completely committed to this right now.  On the days when I do keep Oliver home from daycare these few weeks I have off, I'm much more focused on doing fun things together, things that are not compatible with potty training.  But I'm thinking that next week, we might have to skip fun and potty train instead.

On a more positive note, time outs are going well.  I say that like we have to use them frequently, but we don't.  Maybe once or twice every few days, and most days not at all.  He usually gets them for some repeated behavior, like throwing hard toys, hitting the dog, getting to physical with me, or pushing on the door to the toy cabinet such that he might break it off.  He gets a warning when does something (which I'm not sure if he understands, but we do it anyway), and then if he does it again (usually smiling and looking right at us to see if we notice), he gets a time out.  Two minutes.  I tell him when I put him in time out what not to do ("No throwing the block" or "No hitting Lucy"), and I've noticed recently that when I go to take him out of time, he tells me what he did wrong or what he's not supposed to do, and he stops the behavior when he comes out.  If he's done something to me or Lucy, he gives me a hug or pats Lucy nicely.  It's great to have a kid who doesn't require a lot of discipline, but I know that could change, especially with a younger siblings coming, so I'm glad we have something in place to help if it does.

Here's your sign

Oliver seems to be ready for potty training.  He pees and poops on a pretty regular schedule.  He is sometimes dry when I go to change his diaper.  He knows the words pee, poop, and potty, and what they refer to.  He has been tugging at his diaper, especially when wet or poopy, for a while now.  And then recently  he has either asked to go poop on the potty or told me as or after he poops.  Yesterday, I picked him up at 3pm and took him to the Dragon Park. We had only been there 15-20 minutes when he says, "Poop," then gets down off the jungle gym and backs up to me so I can look in his diaper.  And there, sure enough, is poop.  Then at dinner, he said it as he started grimacing.  He already had some out by the time we got him onto the potty, but it's pretty evident that he knows when he's pooping and doesn't like to have it in his diaper (supposedly one advantage of cloth diapers). 

The thing is, I'm not sure what to do from here.  They put him on the potty at daycare every time it's time for a diaper change.  I put him on the potty here at home.  But so far, he doesn't go in it very often.  He's clearly getting tired of diapers, and naturally so am I.  So what next?  I know people who have done the 1-day potty training method, the 21-day potty training method, and others who tell me that, even though their kids seemed ready early on, they still aren't trained at 3 and 4.  I really don't want to deal with that. 

The only things we have to fear...

are the lawnmower and the frog potty.

Oliver's fear of the lawnmower was reestablished last week. Wes mowed the backyard one evening, and Oliver was watching with great interest at the back door. So I let him out in the yard. We don't want him to play around the lawnmower, but we don't want him to be overly afraid of it either. Wes turned off the mower a minute later to empty the grass out, and Oliver followed him to the back corner of the yard while he did that. Then Wes turned the mower back on. And Ollie lost it. He turned around and ran toward me on the patio, crying hysterically. He tripped on some bricks and fell over, which escalated the crying.

Ollie sat with me the rest of the time. I tried to put him down once when he was getting squirmy, but he started crying before his feet hit the floor. What makes me laugh is that Olives loves the vacuum and is afraid of the lawnmower. Lucy is not afraid of the lawnmower but does not like the vacuum.

The other fear Ollie is facing is his frog potty. After peeing in his potty a second time, Oliver burst into tears, and ever since then he gets completely worked up if I try to put him on it. He'll play with it, sit on it himself, and even asks about it (he does a little dance every time he says "potty" -- seems to be some confusion with a dance his daycare teacher does when she says "party"), but if I put him on it, there's screaming, tears, and the need for a hug.

Soon, perhaps, he will get some outside naked time. He's tugging at his diapers when he poops in them and shows a real interest in potty training. If only I could convince him that the frog's not out to get him.

Wee-wee Self

Oliver peed in his potty for the first time today!  I realized he'd drunk his entire sippy cup of cranberry juice and water in about thirty minutes and would probably soon be soaking his diaper, so I took him upstairs, put him on his potty, and got a big stack of books to read.  I kept encouraging him to go "pee-pee" so he would start to associate the word with the action.  And then, finally, he went.  There was lots of clapping on my part, but he just wanted to see how Curious George Goes to the Library turns out.

Afterward, when I got him up to put a diaper back on him, he turned around and splashed in the pee.  One battle won, one lost.  Still a victory.

Free Willy

Oliver is a typical little boy.  I suppose.  And he has entered what Freud would call the phallic stage.  So far, he fortunately doesn't seem to have developed an Oedipus complex, but he has begun to focus his attention, well, down there.  He plays with it when I change his diaper.  I literally have to pin his arms down to get the diaper on without a hand fastened inside.  Every time I've put him on his frog potty, he spends the whole time playing with his Wee Willie Winkie rather than peeing into the potty.  

Last week, on a nice afternoon when Oliver was in nothing but a t-shirt and diaper (which he kept taking off), I decided to let him run around the backyard without it on.  This is, I imagine, how he will spend parts of the summer in what I hope will be the first stages of potty training.  The thing is, I don't know if he'll use it if he keeps holding on to it.  (And I only hope that there's no phallus meets brick patio incidents that leave me without grandchildren.)

So tonight after his bath, I went to lotion Ollie up.  He likes to help, of course, and so I gave him little bit in his hand.  And what did he do -- well, he lathered it up, of course.

I know it's a stage.  I know it's normal.  But dude.  I guess this is just part of having a boy.