Gaining Confidence

I am feeling much more ready to tackle potty training. I have been reading everything I can manage to get my hands on and we went shopping for big girl underpants! Smug-Baby picked out princesses and ponies. She actually wanted to get all of the different kinds, in all of the different sizes but we finally decided on princesses and ponies. We also picked out several packages of stickers and I have printed out a potty training chart and attached it to a sheet of cardboard. The plan for that is that she will get a sticker for each thing she does correctly (pull her pants down, sit on the potty, use the potty, pull her pants back up). I may just give her the stickers to play with as she seems to like that, but I want to have the chart on-hand if she responds to that.

In addition, we have been practicing pulling her pants down and back up. I want her to start getting the concepts even though she has a hard time getting her pants over the diaper at this point. We have also watched a couple of videos about going to the potty and I plan on playing those whenever she has TV time the rest of the week so she gets the point there too and she has potty thoughts in her head all day.

We have talked about how on Friday she won’t be wearing diapers anymore and on Friday she will be a big girl who uses the potty. I plan on continuing that talk and trying to get her excited for training day. I have juice on-hand and a loose plan of action for training day.

I was feeling really nervous about making this leap, but I feel a lot more prepared now and I am gaining some confidence in the process, her readiness and my ability to training her successfully.

Update on the sleeping situation: Smug-Baby is still napping her in own bed and own room without issue. She is sleeping about the same amount of time as she was when she was in our bed and when she was in her bed in our room. Night time is a bit harder. We decided last night to let her stay up until she showed true signs of being tired and I think she went down in about 6 minutes with Smug-Hub (he let me go on to sleep) about 10:30. The hope being that she would be more tired and ready for a longer sleep; I slept until 3am without interruption as Smug-Hub took care of her need until then (thank you, thank you, thank you!!). When he came to bed he said that she had been restless most of the night and not in a deep sleep, seeming to whimper and cry out as soon as he left the room all night. She cried out again about 3:45 and I laid with her for a while until she seemed back in a deep sleep. When I got up at 5 (deciding to skip a shower since I had showered the night before), she was still sleeping soundly. In an attempt to keep things really quiet, I took my stuff to the downstairs bathroom to get ready for work. I was dressed and just brushing my teeth when I heard her crying. By the time I got upstairs to her, she had gotten out of bed and turned on her bedroom light and was coming out of her room. I scooped her up but there was no way she was going back to sleep at that point.

Poor Smug-Hub had only been asleep about 2 hours when I had to wake him again to be with her while I left for work. Its days like this when being laid off sounds like a blessing!!

I wonder how much of this night-time restlessness has to do with being in her own room (very little I think) and how much has to do with something else going on with her. Maybe her teeth are bothering her, maybe her belly is hurting, maybe she is having a growth spurt! Who knows!! I just have to keep moving forward and know that everything is a process and will take time for her to adjust.