Category Archives: Potty Training

Night Duty, Again!

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After having our first son potty trained in just 3 days (at 25 months) and never having an accident I was boasting my chest ruffles pretty loudly whenever potty training came up with family and friends. Call it denial or positive thinking I was convinced that there would be no problems with the twins either. They turned 25 months and then 30mo and still had absolutely no interest in letting go of their comfy and warm diapers that I dragged from the store every month on my back bent over doubly (why I never heard of ‘Amazon Mom’ is beyond my understanding. That thing there saved us so many $ and so much time&trouble I wish I had heard of it when the twins were first born). I started potty training with them several times just to realize that it was of no use when they’d pee in the toilet and then 15 minutes later finish emptying their bladder on the carpet in the basement. Too much stress, too much work and who really cares if they don’t get potty trained at all until they’re 12?

Throughout the past spring Joshua had been watching his big brother use the toilet with some interest.  He then started to tell us that he needed to ‘potty’ at diaper change. We’d take him to the bathroom and he’d often pee and we’d do the clapping and cart wheeling and confetti and he would beam of pride. Then he’d start telling us he needs to ‘potty’ before he wet his diaper. This went on for about 2 months before I realized that the boy is ready to say good buy to diapers .. or so I thought.

Joshua does not like change. Last winter his shoes were 2 sizes too small before I got him to wear the bigger pair without a full blast tantrum. I was never able to introduce his new winter hat, that’ll have to wait ‘till this winter.  I don’t know why I thought he’d let go of his diapers without a fight. We did the whole ‘big boys wear underwear’, ‘look at Daddy, he’s got underwear’ speech. We bought underwear with his favorite colors and animals and trucks and you name it. We promised candy and toys and moon from the sky and yet he was not seeing the light.

Until one day when he wanted to be ‘like Nathan’. I’m not entirely sure what happened but he’s been fine since. As long as we call his underwear pull ups.

His sister on the other hand was a tougher one to train and according to my husband that shouldn’t come as a surprise considering who her mother is. She took her sweet time and had accidents, refused to go until it was too late and then she’d cry hysterically that she didn’t mean to pee on the floor but had to go so bad …

But that’s not what I wanted to write about, really. I wanted to tell you that I am living a phase of regret. I am no longer able to sleep through the night as I was used to for sometime. I now have three children unable to pee in their pull-ups but yet too young to hold the pee in all night … so that leaves me to get up at least once per kid per night, on a good night. There are nights when I am up more than when they were infants. And I’m not liking this. I know that ‘this too shall pass’ and pretty soon they are big enough to use the bathroom alone in the middle of the night. Until then I’ll be in night duty. Once again.

Did you feel like your workload increased when your kids potty trained? How did you help them figure out bathroom at night?

 

Cloth Diapers for Two, Please

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As we all well know, multiples can really drain your wallet/check book/credit card/(non-existent) life savings/etc. As Jen noted earlier today, using cloth diapers is one way you can exert some control over the financial drain of diapering two or three or more babies. In my family we also found cloth diapers to be the best choice for us. Here’s why.

My mom cloth diapered all of her children, so I was intrigued about cloth diapers from the start. Cloth diapering certainly uses water and energy (and bleach at times), but I personally believe that it does less damage to the environment than using disposables. I also was somewhat uncomfortable with the chlorine and urine-absorption chemicals found in most disposable diapers.

My husband made it clear that I had to make a viable financial case for cloth diapers. I took this as a challenge and figured out how to make cloth diapers easy and affordable for us. Now that we’ve been using cloth diapers for a year and a half, we both agree that it’s been a great decision.

Cloth diapering is easy. I am fortunate enough to live in a city where I can enjoy a fabulous diaper service. Every Friday morning by 8am my bag of dirty diapers is picked up from my porch and replaced by a new bag of freshly cleaned diapers. I fold the diapers into fourths and lay them in adorable Velcro-tabbed diaper covers. When it’s time for a change I dump the diaper and all of its contents into a diaper bin and lay a new folded diaper in the cover. When the cover is dirty I throw it in the laundry basket. I wash a load of my girls’ clothes, including diaper covers, once or twice a week. Now that they’re eating solids, I rarely have to do much pre-scrubbing of the covers since most of the mess gets dumped straight into the diaper pail and the diaper service does the rest. That, for me, is the best part about using a diaper service.

Cloth diapering saves me money. Back in the newborn days, when we were going through many more diapers than we are now, the diaper service was especially cost-competitive with disposables. We were paying about 7 cents less per diaper than we would have with the disposables I priced at our local Target. Now that my girls use fewer diapers, we’ve lost some of that economy of scale with the diaper service, but the benefits of the cloth diapers more than make up for that. We also use cloth wipes, which I just throw in with our regular laundry, so we aren’t buying cases and cases of baby wipes on a regular basis either. In the summer I dry the covers, wipes and clothes on the line.

Using the free dryer

Cloth diapering has many ancillary benefits. In my experience, these include:

  1. If breastfeeding, cloth diapers give you a much better sense of how much urine output your babies are producing — and thus how much milk they’re consuming. Urine can “hide” better in disposables. I liked being able to see exactly how much my girls were producing.
  2. Cloth diapers keep messes inside the diaper so much better than disposables. The only major blowouts I’ve had were when I was using disposables while we were away from home on trips.
  3. Cloth diapering lets you control exactly what comes into contact with your babies’ most sensitive areas.
  4. Cloth diapering frees up enormous space in your garbage can. This also saves us money, because in Seattle the larger your garbage can, the larger your monthly utilities bill. Cloth diapering (and city-sponsored composting!) allows us to use a very small garbage can.
  5. Other moms have told me that cloth diapering makes potty training much easier, because kids begin to notice their wet diapers and dislike that feeling. I’m seriously hoping this rumor proves true! The sooner we potty train the sooner we stop paying for diapers all together.
  6. Cloth-diapered bums are freaking cute.

I see a plumber's bum

Of course cloth diapering is, as with everything, probably harder with twins and triplets than with a singleton. Here are my tips for cloth diapering with twins:

  1. Have backup disposables on hand. I probably buy one small box of disposables every two months or so.
  2. Buy used diapers and/or covers. The baby consignment stores here in Seattle sell tons of used diaper covers, and I often find $15 covers for $4 or so. If you don’t have nearby consignment stores, diaperswappers features a forum where moms sell their used diapers and diaper covers to each other.
  3. Make sure every caretaker is instructed on how to use your cloth diapers. Don’t allow anyone the excuse, “I don’t know how to use those diapers.” It’s easy to learn, and it frees you from being responsible for all those diaper changes!
  4. If you’re overwhelmed with the decisions to be made regarding cloth diapering, start with disposables. There’s no reason you can’t revisit cloth diapering after a month or two. Plus, your children will be bigger and you may be able to skip over the smallest sizes of cloth diapers.
  5. If you have a diaper service available in your area, it’s a great baby shower gift to ask for. People can prepay for service and you can begin the service whenever you’re ready.

This is how I imagined it would be

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Earlier this week as I planned what I would write today, I frequently came back to the idea that being at home with my children was not how I had imagined it would be. I finished my time as student and our nanny’s contract ended in December, so I decided I would take some time at home with my children. I don’t know if it was the excitement of Christmas, the changes in routine of the holidays, the cold weather that kept us inside, my expectations about what I get done each day, the appointments and activities we had scheduled, the transitions into the “terrible twos” (times two!) or the physical effects of diet, sleep and exercise patterns, but things were not going as I had imagined.

But today, things seemed to get on track. My son (Big Brother or BB) got up and came down for breakfast with a smile on his face. We enjoyed our breakfast together. I cuddled my three children (and their three babies) on the couch and we read stories together. The girls (R and S)  took turns examining each other and their babies with the medical kit. BB planned a pretend birthday party for us, and he sang happy birthday to each of sisters (after asking me “what name is this baby?”). That seemed like a perfect time to have snack, so they had the homemade muffins we made yesterday sitting together in the living room.  My son vacuumed up the crumbs, while R and S took the dishes into the kitchen. Everyone helped out.

For lunch, we made cornmeal muffins with leftover chicken and vegetables. They were thrilled with muffins for a main course, even though lunch was a little later than usual. BB stayed upstairs for his required quiet time, and I got to have some time to eat my lunch by myself. R and S settled for nap, and slept over an hour.

When quiet time was over BB played independently for a while. When the girls finished their nap, they played fairly independently too. I showed BB how to play a counting game on the computer (also good practice for his fine motor skills), and I had a few minutes to sit down and look at a new cookbook I got for Christmas.  Dinner was leftover soup I made in the crockpot yesterday, so there was no panic to get food on the table for dinner.

We accomplished quite a bit during the day. I worked with R and S using the techniques from speech therapy. We worked together to label with new toy bins they got for Christmas. I’d been anxious to get this done, so it was a big relief to cross it off my to-do list. I got two loads of laundry done, which is the minimum required to keep up with recently potty-trained twins since I refuse to buy pull-ups for naps and bedtime. The kitchen was mostly clean before dinner after two loads of dishes. BB had vacuumed parts of the house, and most of the toys were put away in the toy bins.

The day wasn’t without its moments. I did have to intervene and take away a few toys.  There were a couple of accidents, and some poopy training pants. I had to threaten to put the girls in playpens before they quieted for naptime, and my son tried to disassemble the Learning Tower. There were a few flare-ups between the kids, particularly when I was on the phone.

But overall, something was different. Maybe things did go more smoothly. Maybe my expectations were more realistic. Maybe I’m getting better at integrating what the kids need with what I want to accomplish. Maybe we’re all getting in to a routine, especially when we don’t have to go anywhere or do anything. Whatever happened, today is much closer to how I imagined things would be.

All I want for Christmas….

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Dear Santa,

All I want for Christmas is three children who can reliably and independently use the potty.

Thank you and Merry Christmas.

I know this is a big wish, but it would have a large ripple effect:

  • fewer loads of kids’ laundry
  • fewer “potty parties” with all of us in a small half bath waiting while everyone takes a turn “trying” on the toilet
  • hands that aren’t so chapped from frequent washing
  • more spontaneous trips out of the house because we’d need less preparation and less baggage
  • more money to spend in other ways

Unlike Any Other

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If there’s anything I’ve learned in the last two months, it is this simple truth: potty training is completely unlike all previous transitions of baby- and toddler-hood.

The moms of older kids are just shaking their heads and chuckling at me right now, and that’s just fine. We all come to these realizations in our own time.

While you can argue about “readiness” for the other big transitions of the first few years (sleeping through the night, letting go of bottles or pacifiers, etc.), I have found that most of them you can kind of muscle your way through.  Choose your approach, implement it consistently, and grit your teeth for the three or four days it takes to make the transition.  A friend of mine has a theory that nearly everything with babies and kids takes about three to four days to settle in, so you have to give it that long.

Potty training is an entirely different beast.  Maybe it’s because they’re older and more manipulative smarter.  Maybe it’s because, instead of “removing” something, you’re asking them to actively “do” something.  Maybe it’s the perfect storm of development and control.  But try as I might, it simply is not something you can just hunker down and get through in a couple of days.

Friday Portrait: 7/52

Of course, even that isn’t entirely true.  Never was there a situation that was more child-specific.  My daughter actually took to potty training rather well.  The first week or two felt long, but the truth is that she took to it quickly, and has stayed shockingly consistent.  Barely two months later and she is, knock on wood, even Pull-Up free at night and nap.  That’s just her thing.

Becca

Her brother, on the other hand… well.  He seemed to take to it well the first week.  And then the second week arrived and, pardon the expression, it was an absolute shitstorm of constant accidents.  He’d have a success or two in the morning, and then straight downhill for the rest of the day.  After a looong week and a half of constant accidents (on his part) and a complete emotional breakdown (on my part), I put him back in Pull-Ups, full-time.  Since then, he has absolute negative interest in the potty.  He has used it here and there, but mostly wants nothing to do with it.  And he’s in such an intensely controlling, contrary, stubborn phase right now, I’m simply stepping away and not turning it into a massive power struggle.

Daniel

You just never know what you’re going to get when it comes to potty training.  You could have the kid who can hold it for hours on end, or the one who has to sprint to the bathroom every 45 minutes.  You could have the one who’s afraid of pooping, or the one who will happily sit on the pot anywhere and everywhere.

And you’ll never know until you try.

So, you parents of potty trainees, how have your kids varied in their potty hang-ups? What were their struggles and successes?  Did you find a particular approach worked wonders on one child and was a disaster with the other?

Learning how to play with my kids

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You’d think that, at 2.5, I’d know how to play with my children.  And to a large extent, of course, I do.  But the truth is that I spend a large portion of the day coordinating, shuttling, refereeing, and then getting out of the way when they’re actually playing nicely with one another. We go to activities together, we come home together. They play while I make lunch. They go down for nap together. Repeat, repeat, repeat.

But recently, due to some potty-training boot camp weekends, I have had the opportunity to spend nearly the entire weekend with each kid, alone. And it’s amazing how different that experience is.

My daughter was the first to go on the boot-camp front, so my husband disappeared for most of the day with our son.  Rebecca has an impressive attention span, and could stay focused on one activity for quite a while.  Read a bunch of books, roll out some play-doh, create multiple large-scale finger-paint masterpieces.

Stuck in the house

She pretty much chose an activity that she wanted to do, had me set it up for her, and played independently for 20 minutes or more at a stretch.  Oh, sure, she wanted me to look at what she’d done, and we had fun comparing the sizes of our finger-paint handprints. And she can be goofy as all get-out, and loves to race circles around the first floor on a big green racing turtle. But she’s an introvert, just like her daddy.  She could spend a lot of time engrossed in her own little world, singing songs to herself.

Two weeks later, and the kids switched places. It was Daniel’s turn for a weekend of mommy and potty. I scarcely realized how much I should have rested up for the whirlwind that is my son.  In terms of straight physical activity, he’s not the perpetual-motion machine that a lot of toddler boys are.  But he never, ever, EVER stops talking.

2.5

The talking was not a surprise to me.  He’s been like that for ages.  What I did find fascinating is his new love of pretend-play.  He would come up with elaborate story lines and want me to act them out with him.  Most were a mish-mash of favorite TV shows and memories of things we’d done together.  But he wasn’t just telling the story, we were playing it.  I had to sit next to him on the bench of the Dinosaur Train, and stamp his ticket with my claw. I sat in the back seat of Daddy’s car (actually, the floor of our mudroom) while he drove us to the airport and the museum.  I could only convince him to take a potty break from these elaborate tales by suggesting that we visit the potty on the Dinosaur Train/airplane/museum bathroom.

The extrovert, which he obviously gets from me, bounces from one thing to the next and wants me to be involved in every part.  That is, at least, until he tells me to get off of the couch and go into the kitchen. When I ask why, he says it’s so he can slide down the arm of the couch (which he knows he’s not really supposed to do – bad liar).

It was really something to shift out of my normal gear, which is to just kind of manage the chaos and the outings and make sure everyone is reasonably happy, somewhat well-behaved, and not killing one another.  To actually take a day or two, stay in the house, and play with each kid on their own terms.

What about you? Have you gotten the chance to sit and play with one kid at a time? Do you find them remarkably similar or completely different?

Cold Turkey

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I’m a rip-off-the-bandaid kind of person, at least as far as parenting goes.  In most things, I have no interest in dragging out the process.  I’d rather have one really horrible week and then have something be over, instead of going back and forth for months on end.

Call me a sadist, but I actually kind of loved sleep-training. We did overnight, naps, and ditching the swaddle, all at the same time.  Once I had read up on the method and bought into the concept, I did not have any trouble holding my resolve for cry-it-out.  Four days later, I had two 6-month-olds who slept 12 hours at night and woke up happy.  Totally worth the three hours my son cried that first night (and the third, too). He’s been a ridiculously solid sleeper ever since.  I am the first to encourage other people to do it. Hell, if I was a night-owl like my husband, I’d probably go into business and let people pay me to sleep-train their kids.

I went cold-turkey on saying goodbye to bottles, too.  Just threw ‘em in the trash one day, and that was that. My daughter barely drank any milk for a few days (plenty of water and dairy, don’t worry), but once we found the cup she liked, all was well.  Swapping out a bottle for a cup here and there just wasn’t our style.

And now, I have 2.5-year-olds. You can probably guess what transition is up next.

Potty training.

(cue horror movie music)

I’ve been thinking about it for months, now.  We’ve held out simply due to my own fears, not because I think the kids weren’t ready.  For whatever reason, I finally decided it was time.  I decided to start with my daughter, and have my husband take her brother out of the house for as much of the weekend as humanly possible. (Two solid days of the four of us not leaving the house and trying to negotiate the potty all together sounded like a recipe for disaster… I wanted us to still like each other when this was all over.)

Saturday morning, we through out all of the smaller diapers in the house and put my daughter in underwear.  Watched her like a hawk, tried to keep her entertained without leaving the house. For a mom that usually gets the kids out and about at least once or twice a day, it goes counter to everything I usually strive for, but we’ve stayed in.

Today is day three, and I think (knock on wood) that we may be turning a corner.  I’ll do my best to give a full report when we’re out of the weeds.

In the meantime, I can tell you one thing: I will not be turning into any kind of professional potty-trainer.  But we’ve gone cold turkey, and there is no going back.

See you on the other side.

Everyone's an Expert

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I’m the kind of person who likes to do the right thing. If the sign says, “No Passing” you can bet your bottom dollar that I’ll continue following that car that’s going 2 mph even though there’s not another car for miles to come. That’s just who I am. Not sure if I was born that way, or if it was something I learned along the way, but I’m a big stickler for following the rules.

But it was that particular part of my personality that made parenting so challenging for me in the beginning. The hospital doesn’t send you home with a manual explaining the right way to bring up your children. And my head was spinning with all the conflicting advice I was getting from doctors, nurses, lactation consultants, and pediatricians, not to mention my mother-in-law. I mean, how could the pediatric nurse practitioner advise something totally different than what the pediatrician had? They work in the same building, and it the same practice! Shouldn’t they be on the same page? It was literally driving me to tears (with the help of my crazy hormones, I suspect). I just wanted to hear that this was how you do it, so I could go home and do it that way and feel satisfied that what I was doing was the right thing.

And then one day, I went to a new mothers’ group and heard those simple words that changed my whole outlook on parenting. The facilitator said, “Every mother is different, and every baby is different. What works for some moms and their babies doesn’t work for other moms and their babies.” And although what she said was so simple, it was so freeing for me, because it somehow made it okay for me to try out different techniques to teach my babies to nurse, to get them to fall asleep, to calm them when they were screaming their heads off. Because the recommendations from a particular “expert” might work for some moms and some babies, but they it might not work for us. (And even what works for one twin does not necessarily work for the other.) As parents, we know our children best and have to learn to listen to the expert within us to guide us as we make important parenting decisions.

Which leads me to present day. Several family members have told me that my daughter appears to be ready for potty training. My son, clearly, is not. They have just turned 22 months old, and although I hadn’t planned to even think about potty training until my guys were about 2 ½, I happen to believe that it is possible my daughter just might be ready to give it a try. She does show some signs of readiness (thanks for the link, Sadia), and I actually feel like I’m ready to take this on.

The experts certainly have a lot to say about potty training- when a child should be ready and how persistent or relaxed the approach should be- but I know it’s okay if I don’t agree with all the wisdom they have to share. I’ll start by following the advice that seems to fit best with my own philosophies, but in the end it’s going to be all about what works for us- trying things out, adjusting the game plan, even going back to the drawing board if necessary.

And while I had hoped (perhaps expected) that my twins would potty train at the same time, my gut tells me that it’s okay to give it a try with just one. Perhaps my son will surprise me (we do have training pant for him just in case), or maybe I’ll learn that really neither one of them is ready quite yet. We’ll just have to wait and see.

So how do you navigate through the sea of parenting experts? Are there experts you swear by? Or do you like to chart your own course as you go? (Any potty training tips would be greatly appreciated as well.)

You can read more from reanbean at reanbean.com.

Back 2 the Future: Child-proofing

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Griff Thena Phe recliner3 121605
“Child-proofing” is a term that gives me a good hearty chuckle, like “potty trained.” We child-proofed the heck out of our house when we were expecting the twins. Magnetic locks on all the cabinets, with the magnet stored up high. Gates at the top and bottom of the stairs. Locks on all the door handles, outlet covers out the wazoo, chemicals stored up high (except personal lubricant)… The kids had the run of the living room, kitchen, dining room and hallway, but couldn’t get anywhere else.

That was perfect, until the twins learned to walk.

From: me
Date: 12/20/05 21:09:12
To: NorthernWarrenCountyOhioFreecycle@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [Freecycle] ISO baby gates PLEASE!!!

Please, for the love of all that is sacred, if you have a spare baby gate, would you consider giving or loaning it to me?

I have 16-month-old twins and I just cleaned the kitchen trash off the floor for the 9th time today. This is AFTER I taped the lid shut. They just used their twin powers for evil and lifted the lid right off.

We have two gates but they are on the top and bottom of the stairs. I never would have dreamed we’d need to gate them out of every part of the house. Silly me.

So please, I am nearly in tears because they think they are hilarious but I can’t take this anymore! If you have a gate you aren’t using I PROMISE I will return it to you if you can loan it to me. Or maybe I can trade you for something. We just don’t have any $ for gates until at least the new year, and even then… Gates are crazy-expensive.

Thank you in advance!

[Note: The twins thinking they are hilarious frequently coincides with me nearly being in tears. That hasn’t changed in the last four years.]

This post resulted in an intimidating fencing system cobbled together from various semi-broken baby gates. On the plus side, the boys were finally confined to the living room and hallway and were no longer free to roam and plunder the garbage. Sadly, my 3-year-old had to be able to predict her need to urinate in enough time to press the release button – which only sometimes worked – on the hall gate blocking the babies from the kitchen/dining room/bathroom. And my blog is named “Diagnosis: Urine,” so we all know how that worked out for me.

Any good “child-proofing” stories in your past?

Jen is the married work-from-home mother of 7-year-old Miss A, 5-year-old boys G and P, and 3-year-old Haney Jane. She also blogs at Diagnosis: Urine.