It Has Begun

What is "it" you may ask? Why, potty training of course. I kind-of started last week with a few scheduled potty times and a switch to pull-ups, but the whole thing was a waste of time. Once the boys realized that they could pee in the pull-ups and not feel much different, they just peed whenever. Plus they couldn't manage pulling them down and up easily. I resigned myself to going straight-to-underwear this week after we got past a few events that we needed to attend with the boys. The carpet people came to pick up my carpets for annual cleaning on Monday, so those are out of the way. We have nothing planned from yesterday afternoon until the Saturday morning swim lesson, so we've got some time to start working on it.

Yesterday after morning playgroup and lunch, I let them pick out underwear for their nap. They made it through the nap dry but peed soon after waking up, which caused them (especially Liam) to be upset. I made the mistake of leaving the potties in the bathroom, and I think they were "out of sight, out of mind", even though I reminded the boys where the potties were. There were several accidents yesterday, including two which required the sofa upholstery cleaner. Yay!

Last night I re-read the potty training Q & A entries from John Rosemond's website and realized that I should keep the potties in the boys' sight for the first few days so they are easy to access. This morning Liam said, "I'm not gonna pee pee on the floor" after I took off his night diaper, and then he promptly peed in his potty. Then the rest of the morning Liam said, "I need to pee pee" before he went by himself. Graeme said the same but sometimes spotted his underwear while he said it, and then he went to the potty. He peed on the floor once this morning 5 minutes after peeing a little in the potty and saying he was finished.

They both peed (and Liam pooped) in their potties before their nap, but woke up UGLY after peeing during the nap. After I got them cleaned up and settled down, they peed in their clean underwear soon thereafter. The rest of the afternoon went okay, with both of them requesting to pee during dinner. Graeme hasn't pooped in the potty yet, so hopefully that won't be an issue for him. I imagine that there's nothing quite like a constipated toddler. Fun! We'll see how it goes tomorrow.

They'll wear night diapers until they're day trained, and of course they have to wear the swim diapers for swimming lessons. It's underwear-only for all other times though. Messy, but supposedly more effective time-wise than pull-ups. It appears that we'll be having ups and downs for a few days before they get the hang of it.


Besides clapping wildly and yelling "I PEE PEED IN THE POTTY!", there are some funny and/or bizarre things that they boys have said and done lately, and I thought I'd share a few:

1) Bargaining for fruit - I'm not sure how this came about, but one night while the boys were in bed not sleeping, I hear, "One apple". Then, "No, one PINEapple." Followed by, "Two strawberries". "No, one strawberry". "No, two bananas". And so on, for a couple of minutes. They have debated fruit on several occasions since then. Maybe they got the idea from the fruit all over their Elmo and Zoe cups, which I've caught Liam studying during mealtimes instead of drinking his milk.

2) Graeme is sitting next to me while I'm on the laptop, and he sneezes all over the screen. He immediately says, "I excuse me'd on the 'puter!". At least he knows what to say when he sneezes.

3) Micro is running off at the mouth during Sean's morning routine, and I asked him if he could say, "No comment". He immediately repeats, "No comment, mommy". If only he would take that advice.

4) We have a small, maybe 2-inch long gecko in our house (probably one of many) which sometimes runs across the wall but mostly hides during the day. A week ago the gecko showed himself while Liam was walking down the stairs. I was a couple of stairs in front of him, but he still managed to jump onto my leg in fear of the tiny lizard. In an attempt to make the lizard seem cute and lovable, I thought we would give him a name. I listed names typical (Bill) and not typical (Beauregard), but was shot down by both Graeme and Liam. I told them that I would come up with a name they would like. That night, "Jamal" popped into my head, which is more than a little off. The next morning, I said to Liam, "The lizard's name is Jamal", and Liam beamed, "Yes, Jamal!!!". Evidently the kids ARE as weird as I am.

5) The boys are into rockets and space lately, and they wanted to see a picture of a rocket on the computer instead of the same one in their book. I went to the NASA website and found some good pics of Saturn V, plus a space shuttle blastoff. Now whenever they see the laptop, they want to see the rocket, want to see the rocket, want to see the rocket, want to see the rocket, want to see the rocket!!!! So I had sense enough to bookmark the page after being too slow to bring up the pictures after only the second request. Today Graeme requested airplanes also, so I bookmarked the Lockheed Martin photo gallery (Granddaddy Al will be proud!), and he had a good time staring at the airplanes, satellites, and rockets for a solid 10 minutes. Whatever works, I say.

I've already ordered some rocket and airplane books for the boys and have many more books, plus NASA, space, and airplane videos on my wish list for them. If they keep this up, they'll be having a space-themed 3rd birthday party in April 2009 and will be wearing this while riding this. The things they sell these days! I feel old when I look at some of this stuff and think of what was available in the '70s when I was 3. We had to make our space shuttle out of cardboard. Oh wait, there were no shuttles then. Anyway, I'm getting my tired self to bed now before I look at more crap on Amazon.