Potty Training??

Crazy buddy. I’m going to document this just so I can remember. So, the buddy has always had a sensitive bum. He’ll be good for a long time, and then he’ll get a bout of frequent poops and then his bottom is just awful and it stays that way for weeks. Well, this time, I decided to give him some air time (aka naked time) to help heal him up. I told him one time to tell me if he needed to go potty because we don’t want to teetee or poop on the floor. Of course, he said, “no,” his favorite word. I wasn’t too concerned anyway. I have a great carpet cleaner, so I just let him play and didn’t bother him about it. He loves to sit on the potty, so he did at one point tell me he needed to go to the potty. I took him…and, he actually tee-tee’d! I was shocked! He was awfully proud of himself too. Mind you, this event occurred after he had been running around naked for probably 1 1/2 hrs or so. He was naked probably about 4 hrs this day, and he never once went on the carpet! Shocking!

Anyway, I did the naked thing off and on for a few days when we were home, just trying to heal his little bottom. He did poop on the floor one time, and I knew I shouldn’t have him go upstairs naked, before nap time, when he had just eaten a big lunch, and I wasn’t upstairs with him. He yelled “poop! mess!” when it happened, and he seemed a bit concerned that it occurred. No biggie. Cleaned up nicely.

So, one day, he decided he wasn’t fond of being naked…and, he went to his sister’s underwear drawer and asked to have panties on…and, he had 3 pair on! HA! It didn’t bother me, but when he wanted to wear those (princess panties) instead of his diapers frequently, I decided it was time to get him his own undies. Got them before I left town.

When I got back into town, he wanted to wear “Thomas” (you know, the train) rather than his diaper. That first day, it was totally me catching him out of the corner of my eye with “the look” and I’d ask him if he needed to go to the potty. He said yes, and he went every time this happened. Stephen joked that I was potty training well. HA! I agreed. We do not intend to do the ask-every-5-minutes-all-day-long type of training. That’s potty training US, not the kid! Just my opinion. Anyway, that was Sunday after morning church services, before his nap.

Since then, he has actually been telling me that he needs to go, and he does. He still has some false runs (he spends time putting TP in the toilets on these occasions), but overall, we are surprised at how well he has done. He even asks to have a diaper sometimes, and we are totally good with that. He usually wants the undies instead of the diaper, which is pretty much the only reason we put him in undies since his bottom is almost healed now. Seriously yucky diaper rash. But, even with the diaper, he asks to go potty. Last night, he had a diaper on while outside playing, and he suddenly said, “potty!” and I followed him inside as he ran around trying to decide which of the 3 potties he wanted to visit (this is what he does every time, so he clearly knows how to hold it!). And, sure enough, he went on the potty and he had a dry diaper!   Tonight, we put a diaper on him to go to church, and got home and put him on the potty and whoosh…and a dry diaper to boot!

So, either it’s a serious fluke, or he’s ready. We have decided though that if it starts being a battle or we start having to ask him all the time, then we will put him back into diapers, and revisit later. We had no intentions of attempting this until much later anyway. But, hey, if it works this time, great! We have no problem putting him in diapers—we do cloth diapers still, so we aren’t buying any new ones, so no money being wasted the longer he’s in diapers. Bonus!

So, do you think we’ll have him back in diapers soon or he’ll be successful in fulltime undie wearing? Any bets? The jury is still out for us. We’re just taking it as it comes for now.

Now, in case you seriously only visit this blog for pictures, I have added some for that very reason.

Abriella had splash day at preschool last Tuesday. My mom was tasked with taking pictures, but I haven’t seen those yet. Here is one I took of her before she went to school.

and, just to compare with last  year…

Then, while Grandma was here, she also had a bit of a shopping spree with the munchkins. A splash pool was part of that. Here they are playing in that (click on picture to go to album). Stephen also took some video of it as well. They enjoy it and they enjoy making it muddy as well! Yuck.

Splash Day and backyard fun

And, here is another picture that I caught about a week and a half ago while driving. I was so happy I happened to have the camera in the car. This is proof that these siblings do like each other sometimes!

Ok, that’s all for now, folks!