Potty Training Weekend

Friday - Day 1:
We started out the morning by bringing the potty into the kitchen and having Smug-Baby practice pulling her new big girl underwear up and down and sitting on the potty. Right away, I was concerned because the book says to keep the child sitting for a long period of time, like 15 minutes and I was lucky if Smug-Baby would sit on the potty for 15 seconds! Also, the books says to give her tons of fluids, but she would have a sip or two and refuse anything else. I tried full strength juice (normally we water it down for her) and drinking out of "mommy's" cup to entice her, but she wasn't really interested. I wanted her first pee to be in the potty, but alas, the first several were on the floor! The whole day, I got increasingly frustrated as she didn't want to sit on the potty and seemed not to realize that she needed to pee until she was already peeing!!

I was concerned that I had miss-interpreted her readiness and by the last afternoon, she was in tears when I made her sit on the potty and I had a bashed pinky toe (from trying to get her to the potty when a pee flow had started and slammed it into the door frame) and was sore from all the sitting on the floor and the getting up and down so much. I let her take a short nap (she had napped early and since Smug-Grandma was coming to watch her for my yoga class, I didn't want her to be cranky and tired) and when I woke her up, I held her close and sat her on the potty. Within a few moments, she had peed AND POOPED!!! I was so happy! Mom and I gave her cookies and clapped and danced around!! She was so pleased with herself too!! She was squealing and clapping and it was wonderful.

Mom told me that she peed in the potty two more times while I was at my yoga class and she had popped up and said "pee-pees" and ran to the potty both times like she had been doing it all her life! I was so happy! I knew that if she just got the concept of what she was supposed to do and had that "gotta go" feeling a few times she would have it down!

That night, I put her into a diaper for night time and she slept through the night (without waking once) from 10pm until almost 8am!

Saturday - Day 2:
I woke her up about 8am. Normally I would have let her sleep, but I wanted to try to catch the first morning's pee to start the day off on the right foot and I knew she had been asleep since 10 the night before!

I woke her up and cuddled her close and took her right into the bathroom.  I pulled off her PJ's and diaper and set her on the potty, all the while holding her close (just as I had done the afternoon before when I woke her from her nap). She cried a bit as she really wanted to go back to sleep, but as soon as I heard the pee hitting the potty, she perked up and as Smug-Hub and I clapped and danced around, she started to get excited!

The whole day was spent holding her on the couch and watch Shrek over and over and asking her to use the potty every few minutes. She spent some time just sitting on the potty watching the movie or reading books and I was able to straighten up the house and get laundry started. Smug-Hub was working all day, so it was really hard not to have any relief or help. I felt like if she wasn't sitting on the potty, then I couldn't take my eyes off her. She ended the day, with all put 2 pees in the potty and a poop in the potty as well!! I couldn't have been happier!! We followed the same diapering at night as the night before.

Sunday - Day 3:
She woke up at 1, 2:30 and 3:45. Finally at 3:45 I pulled her into bed with us. I was tired! Smug-Hub had fallen asleep without his mask and that kept waking me and after waking three more times with Smug-Baby I was beat! She never went back into a full deep sleep and kept crying out for me, reaching for me and cuddling close. I wonder if she somehow knows that most mornings I leave for work and she was feeling like since she had already had two mornings with me that I was probably going to leave her and she was feeling vulnerable. Regardless, we dozed and cuddled until about 8 (which felt like 7 due to daylight savings time) and then got up and tried going to the potty. She wasn't interested. I let her go naked and a few minutes later, she peed - on the floor. Then she peed on the floor again a few minutes later while I was trying to make her breakfast! It was like she totally forgot everything from the days before!!

Smug-Hub was in a terrible mood as he had hurt his back somehow (he says from sleeping  - what??) and was just totally no fun to be around. I made us all breakfast and tried to get Smug-Baby back on track. I needed to go to the consignment sale as it was the final day and everything was 75% off. I also really wanted to leave Smug-Hub in charge with her and let them work together on the potty training since he was gone for the first two days and he will be with her during the mornings. So off I went!

I found some amazing deals and left with more items than I could carry and spent $45!! I was stoked!! I picked up take out on the way home and when I got there for a potty report, Smug-Hub told me that she had peed three more times on the floor and once in her bed during her nap (she had stayed dry during her naps the previous days).

She seemed totally adverse to sitting on the potty and ended up peeing several more times all over the house. I would ask her to sit on the potty for a few minutes and she would refuse and just start peeing! It was like a total setback!! Smug-Hub was still in his lousy mood, saying that watching her closely was impossible and then turning his attention back to his phone or the TV. He laid on the couch with a heating pad and barked orders at us most of the afternoon - I could have stabbed him in the neck with a fork!!!

Finally, in the evening, she peed a few more times and had her poop in the potty. Once she even popped up from watching TV, said "pee-pees" and ran to the potty. Every time she pees successfully, she carries the potty bowl to the toilet, dumps it (God help you if you try to help her) and flushes, waving bye-bye to the pee-pee's! Its actually very cute! So, I know that she is getting it, but I worry about Smug-Hub's ability to focus totally on her when they are alone together. At one point, I asked him to keep an eye on her while I changed into my pajamas and she climbed onto the coffee table, squatted and peed. I came into the room to see her smacking the pee with her hands while he sat less than a foot away, reading something on his phone! Again with the fork stabbing!!! How could he not have heard her! Maybe not the pee hitting the table, but at least the sound of wet smacking should have alerted him to something being amiss!!!

It took over an hour to get her to sleep tonight and I pray for a nice night where CPAP machines are used and babies sleep peacefully for a few hours!! I have to go back to work and real life tomorrow and I need some sleep!! Remember, I didn't get a nap after last night's short sleep!!

Overall, I am pleased with her progress and I know that it is going to take some time and this time next week may be a totally different story!! I know that Smug-Hub's back will feel better and he will go back to being a good husband and father and I will no longer wish him dead. I know that Smug-Baby will get more and more pees into the potty and I will not have to watch her as closely. I know that it will all happen, but right now, I am exhausted!!

Night Time Cuddles

I am finding myself struggling this morning with why I was so interested in getting Smug-Baby to sleep in her own room at night. I think that I was concerned that her night waking was caused by Smug-Hub coming to bed so late and waking her, or his CPAP machine waking her. I also think that I was feeling like having two babies in bed with us at night was going to be pushing it. However, as I lay with my sweet girl wrapped up in my arms this morning, I just couldn’t remember why any of those reasons were all that valid.

Last night, Smug-Baby went to sleep about 9:45 and fell asleep quite quickly. I went on to bed and Smug-Hub was up for a while longer. I woke to hear her crying about 1 and Smug-Hub going in to her room. I got up to pee, resisted the urge to go check on them and went back to bed. He was out of her room, with her sleeping within a few moments and we all went to sleep. She woke crying again about 3:30 and was on her way to our room when I met her in the hall and carried her into our bed. She nestled into the crook of arm, took my pinky finger in one hand and stuck her thumb of the other hand into her mouth and fell right back asleep.

I too went right back to sleep waking a few minutes before the alarm was to go off. I spent those few moments, kissing her head and smelling her hair. I squeezed her close and felt her snuggle more closely. She fits perfectly into the curve of my body, like she was made to fit there, like she was home. I thought about how I was her home for so long and how it is totally natural for her to feel safest when she is wrapped around me. Why am I banishing her to another room again??

I do want her to sleep soundly through the night and I do feel like Smug-Hub’s bedtime habits are disturbing to her and my need to pee all night is disturbing to her, but I am really not feeling overly concerned that she isn’t sleeping all night in her own space. I think that if she wants to come into our bed for a while as she gets used to her new space, then she should and I will try really hard to cherish the moments of sweet baby breathing and tight snuggles, because I have a feeling that all too soon I will be looking back with sadness that these times have past and she is more independent.

Why would anyone want their baby, and lets face it, two years old is still a baby, to be independent and not to need them anymore?? Maybe I am being an emotional pregnant woman but I am not ready for her to spend all night without me, or maybe I am not ready to spend my whole night without her…

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.

Drum Roll Please...

We are going to potty train this weekend!! I am really nervous about it, but I think I just need to bite the bullet and do it. I really feel like Smug-Baby is ready as she hates being wet or dirty and at the same time really hates having the diaper changed.

I feel like maybe I'm not ready. I don't feel like I know what I'm doing and have been reading a few books and articles like a mad woman trying to feel more confident about the process. I still need to purchase her some real, big girl underpants and some kind of mattress protector for her big girl bed. I plan on still putting her in a diaper at night until she wakes up dry consistantly, but for naps she will be diaper free.

The plan is to take Friday off work and spend a full three days concentrating on drinking lots of juice and water and getting lots of practice on the potty. Smug-Grandma is coming over Friday evening to watch Smug-Baby while I have my yoga class and we have tentative plans for a trip to the park on Saturday afternoon, but we will have to see how the training goes. Daddy will take over the training some on Sunday as I do need to make a run to the 75% off day at the consignment sale, but other than those minor interruptions, we will be training full time.

The books say to have the TV and radio off and not to answer the phone. Your full attention needs to be on concentrated instruction; having her pull down her pants, sit on the potty, go, wipe, pull up her pants and empty the potty. You basically do this over and over and over, like every 15 minutes the first day and gradually get longer and longer intervals between when you prompt her to go to the potty. Once she goes to the potty unprompted for the first time, you can be fairly sure that she has gotten the concept and start spreading out the prompts even further, like before leaving the house, before meals, after meals, and so on, letting her remember to go when she needs to on her own.

That should all happen the first day or so and then the subsequent days are spent reinforcing the concepts. After that, you just have to make sure that your whole world revolves around where the various potty's are where ever you happen to be. I think that getting this done before Little-Smug comes along is going to be a good thing on many levels. It will further separate Smug-Baby as the big girl and Little-Smug as the baby. It will give me a chance to get all the diapers refreshed and stripped and ready for Little-Smug and it will be one less thing to tackle with an infant in arms.

So, I just need to put in that time off request and make a Wal-Mart run before Friday. I also have a potty princess DVD from the library so I think that I'll get Smug-Baby watching that daily until Friday too and talk it up a bit for her. Oh... and finish all these books so I actually know what to do on training day... YIKES!!

Big Girl Sleeping

Friday night - Night 1: I had spent the day talking to Smug-Baby about how that evening we were going to sleep in her big girl room all night long. I told her that mommy was going to sleep with her and she wouldn't be scared. I got her to help me move the mattress from the floor of our room into her room and help me lay out the blankets and get the futon mattress set up for mommy to sleep on. Well, it was about 8:45 when we laid down and she flopped around a bit, sticking her feet into the slats on the converted crib and pretending that they were stuck and she needed help to get them out! All in all though, she settled down and fell asleep fairly quickly.

I tried to get comfortable and did sleep on and off, but I was on the freaking floor! It was hard and my hips were screaming by midnight. Smug-Baby stayed asleep except for a few mumbles and she kept trying to fall off the bed. I was so awake and aware that I was able to just move her back onto the bed without her ever waking up. By 4am, I had had enough and headed back to my own bed. Smug-Hub was so warm and comfortable that I was sure that I was fall asleep within seconds. No such luck! I never did fall back asleep!

Smug-Baby on the other hand, slept until 8:15!!!! When she did wake, she cried out for me and I scooped her up and we all had some cuddle time in the big bed and we told her over and over how very proud of her we were!!

Saturday night - Night 2: We had a busy and fun day on Saturday and Smug-Baby took her 90 minute nap in her own bed in her own room without issue. Saturday night, however she had a harder time falling asleep and it was after 10 before I was finally able to make my escape. Smug-Hub and I had decided that my sleeping on the floor again wasn't a good idea, so I put up the bed rail that we used on our bed when she was a baby. It is too big really and I need to get one designed for a toddler bed so she can get out of the bed easily if she needs to, but I wasn't able to find on locally and don't have the funds to purchase one right now anyway, so this will have to do for the time being. Anyway, we also decided that he would be in charge of soothing her if/when she woke up before he came to bed and after he was asleep I would take over.

She must have woken about 11:30, because he was in the process of coming to bed and I woke to see him scurrying out of the bedroom to her side, but I fell back asleep before I really knew what was happening. The next thing I heard was her call to me about 1am, I ran in her room took her hand and said that mommy was here. She was back asleep within seconds and slept until 7am!

Sunday night - Night 3: She again napped for about 90 minutes during the day on Sunday and woke in a happy mood. We have kept telling her how proud of her we were that she is such a big girl! Sunday night, she again took a good while to fall asleep, but was sleeping by 9. I don't recall what time she woke up, but I heard her crying and Smug-Hub soothing her. She woke again about 1:30 and it took me until 2 to get her deeply enough asleep to leave. She was up again at 2:45 calling to me and again it took some time to get her back to sleep. When she woke again at 3:45 I took her into our bed, hoping that she would sleep, but at the very least I would be more comfortable than is realistic when half my body is wrapped around a bed-rail and the other half is on the floor. She never went back into a deep sleep and neither did I. She was fully awake and waving good-bye to me from daddy's arms as I drove off to work this morning.

I could be discouraged that the first two nights seemed to go so well and the one night where getting some sleep was really important to me she was up a lot, but I know that this will be a process and she does have these nights where she isn't able to sleep well and I think that being in her own room didn't really have anything to do with that. Those nights seem to be getting more and more infrequent, but she still has them. Today will be a challenge, but we will get through it and perhaps she will sleep more soundly tonight.

I think that it is a good sign that she was able to sleep as well as she did the first two nights. I think that perhaps my getting up to pee and Smug-Hub coming to bed late and his CPAP machine noise really were disruptive and having her own space is nice for her. I hope that last night was kind of a fluke and she will have more and more nights of sleeping soundly in her own room.

I find it wonderful that she is OK with all this. I think that it says something about how secure she is and how safe she feels. She knows that we will be there for her if she calls and she isn't banned from our bed. She isn't left to feel scared and alone when she wakes feeling vulnerable in the night. I think that we waited until she was ready for this change instead of insisting on it when it was convenient for us. Of course, we are only 3 nights in, so I may be singing a different tune in a week :)

Details of Life

I read an article on Facebook that detailed this man's story of how he wanted to divorce his wife as he had found love with another woman. His wife asked him for a month of living as normally as possible for their son's sake and to carry her every day from their bedroom to the front door of their home just has he had carried her into their home on their wedding day. As the month progressed he realized that they were gaining back some of the intimacy they had lost over their 10 year marriage and at the end of the month he broke things off with the other woman and raced home with flowers for his wife. He found that she had passed away that very day from cancer. She had been fighting it for months and had been so caught up with his mistress he failed to notice. She left him a letter explaining that she knew her time was coming and she wanted to save him the backlash that their son would have if his father had left his dying mother for another woman.

I have no idea if the story is true or if parts of it might be, but it struck me that sometimes we get so consumed with work and school and routines and schedules and lists and the constant to-do's that we let things slide. We don't spend time just looking into our partner's eyes. We don't take the time to stop what we are doing to hug and kiss when we see each other at the end of the work day.

I feel like my marriage is really solid and strong, but that doesn't mean that it could withstand years of neglect! I don't want to get to the point where we NEED marriage counseling or we turn to someone else to fulfill the needs we are no longer getting from each other. I want to be proactive in my marriage and make the effort now to keep us strong and solid!

I expressed all this to Smug-Hub and he agrees. The issue now, is that I don't really know what we should be doing to stay connected! Our lives are really consumed with our children! Smug-Baby and soon Little-Smug will take a lot of time and energy and focus!!

I guess I just want to stay aware of how our marriage is going, where there is tension building and work to resolve it in the moment rather than suppressing our feelings and waking up one day hating each other! I don't know of anyone who says that they actively watched their marriage crash and burn without lifting a finger! Most people realize one day that everything has changed and have no idea how it happened! I don't want to be like that!!!

My husband and I both watched our parents divorce and I think we are both sensitive to how much we don't want to end up like that. We dissect their relationships and work toward not falling into their patterns, so I think that we are on the right track, but we just have to stay there! Stay alert to road blocks and pitfalls and keep working through issues as they arise and perhaps we will look back on our life together as a truly happy and fulfilled one!!!

Sick Day

I took a sick day today. I wasn't sick and neither was Smug-Baby but my instincts told me that something was off and she needed me today. I can't really put my finger on why and what was going on with her, but she took a 3 hour nap which is almost unheard of and she spent the day pretty much curled up in my arms, so I know that my mothering instincts were dead on and I was right to stay home with her.

When she woke up this morning and saw me still in bed with her, her whole face lit up and she giggled before cuddling in close for morning hugs and kisses. Then we got up and make pancakes! I made them with Bisquick like normal, but then I added some cooked Cream of Wheat that I sweetened with some sugar and vanilla. This gave the pancakes a creamy texture and Smug-Hub said that he liked them better than the normal way. Smug-Baby liked them too as she stuffed all of her nicely cut pieces into her mouth at once and asked for more :)

After breakfast, I got her dressed and we waved good-bye to daddy as he headed off to work. After that we spent the morning on the couch watching Sesame Street and cuddling. Every once and a while she would pop off the couch to get something to play with or her water, but it was always short lived and she would climb back into my lap for more cuddles. I meant to do a few things around the house - fold the sheets, wash diapers, straighten up a bit - but I didn't I just stayed on the couch with her.

At noon I laid her down for her nap and was again going to get some stuff done, but instead I laid down myself and napped for a bit. Then I had some lunch and watched some TV. I don't know how long Smug-Baby would have slept, but at 3 she was awoken by the doorbell. Someone was there asking me to sign for the delivery on my phone book. Since I have access to the Internet, I don't have need of a phone book and I turned her away, but the damage was done and Smug-Baby was awake.

She woke up happy and ready for more cuddling. Smug-Grandma called and we decided to try to get in a walk before the thunderstorm so I finally got myself dressed and Smug-Baby and I found our shoes and headed to the Greenway. We walked for about 45 minutes and while it wasn't sunny it was nicely warm. However, Smug-Baby kept curling her body up and to the side in her stroller and closing her eyes - another indicator that something wasn't quite on spot with her.

After the walk, Smug-Grandma went with us to the library. I had a few items to pick up and Smug-Baby loves to play in the children's area. Today however, she sat on my lap most of the time and only warmed up to playing with the blocks and trains after about 30-40 minutes. Since we are there a few times a week and she doesn't normally need a warm up period, I am taking this as another sign that she wasn't feeling 100%. Added to all this was that she didn't want to walk, but to be carried around and would lay her head on my shoulder and curl her body into me. Yeah, something was just off a bit with her.

When we got home, I started dinner and Smug-Hub arrived home. We all ate together and Smug-Baby finished her meal with some Yo-Soy Yogurt which she really liked while Smug-Hub and I split the last Snickers Ice Cream bar behind her back! Then we got all of us ready for bed and I am blogging while Smug-Baby jumps all over her daddy and he feigns pain and suffering!!

It was a really good day overall and I enjoyed being able to drop everything and just hold her all day because it seemed like that was what she needed and I want to always give her what she needs. Tomorrow is going to be busy both at work getting caught up but at home too making up for my day of playing hooky, but it was worth it to get in all those cuddles! I have a feeling that she won't want to spend a whole day in my arms much longer!!