Thursday, February 28, 2013

Eli's in! (2yr 5mo)

CET 2 years and 5 months!
It's a long one so cozy up!

Potty Training Update

Thomas (1 full week into training)
I started him last Thursday evening and for the last several days has been consistently accident free, if he has one it's usually my fault in some way. He hasn't pooped in the potty yet and is still waking up wet from naps, he stayed dry one time so there is hope, I think. Most of the time he tells me when he has to go, I have to help him pull down/up his undies. When we are out he has no fear of the big potties but I can tell he is distracted so he forgets to tell me he has to go, so I have to remember to take him to the bathroom.

Caleb (4 days into training)
I started him Sunday evening and he's been challenging. He pees a lot in the potty but also has lots of accidents and I sometimes have trouble getting him to sit on the potty. I think he needs a little motivation so I started rewarding him with an m&m. I have to be careful with bribery because it back fired on me once. After three consecutive accidents I tried getting him to pee by telling him I'd give him an m&m if he peed and he started crying because I wouldn't give him any after he didn't pee. So I think we just have to establish a pattern of pee then reward and not talk about it until I see he's peed. Today it seems like something has clicked, I'll elaborate more in a sec. He won't tell me when he has to go so I try to take him to the bathroom every hour or so and he can't pull down his undies but can pull them up.

Eli (3 days into training)
I started him Tuesday after he got potty training envy (thank you Thomas for setting such a good example!). I didn't want to do them all at once and felt that Eli would be the hardest to train, but how could I say no to a child that is telling me he wants to try! I'd be crazy right? He has done remarkably well, pretty much accident free starting on day 2. What's more remarkable is that he even pooped the very first day!!! I made a huge deal and called his brothers over to see the awesomeness that had just occurred. And yes I took a picture of it and no I'll save your last meal and not show it to you. I did text the picture to Phil and he replied  "nice turd." We all saw Eli flush it down the toilet. Yesterday morning he woke up with a poopy diaper and today he has yet to poop so I'm hoping he does it again. Like Caleb he can't pull down his undies but can pull them up.

Needless to say I'm extremely happy with how fast all the boys have made progress, I was certainly not expecting it. I'm not terribly worried about getting them to sleep through the night dry, honestly Phil and I hardly ever get through a night without waking up to pee once, so when they are a little older we'll probably have to get them up once to pee until they can do it on their own. I am fully committed at getting them to at least wake up dry from their naps and using as few diapers as possible. So for now I'm going to limit their drinks before nap time, they eat lunch at 12pm so no more drinks after that. Nap time is at 2pm and we'll stay in underwear unless I can convince them to put on the cloth training pants with an outer vinyl shell that I bought (they don't seem to be too keen on those). Diapers will only be worn at night for bed time.

The little potty's are great, we have four, two green ones, a red one and one of a different brand that looks like a dinosaur. We also have a toilet ring adjuster which I'm keeping in my car along with a potty. So there are three different potty's in the bathroom, thankfully it's worked to my advantage because the boys like to pick which potty they sit on, this helps to distract them if they seem reluctant to sit down. There hasn't been too much fighting over who gets which, and I just tell them to wait if they want to use an occupied potty. Eventually I do want to be able to travel without towing a potty around. Last night at meeting (the 2nd time leaving the house with Caleb and Eli) I brought the toilet ring adjuster so the boys could use the big potty. We went to the bathroom twice, Caleb and Eli both sat on it ok but didn't pee. After the 2nd time both peed their pants within minutes of getting off the toilet. This tells me they are not very comfortable with the big toilet yet. We'll work on this too, Thomas has no issues with the big potty.

Today when I dropped off the boys at nursery school we also brought along 6 pairs of underwear, 6 pairs of pants, and 3 pairs of socks and one of our potty chairs from home. As you can see I expected the worst. Different environment different people, and remember up to this point Caleb is still having lots of accidents. I tried not to stress during my much needed couple of hours to run errands. When I picked them up their teacher had wonderful news, zero accidents and all peed three times during their time at school! This is one proud mama!

We have been pretty much staying at home due to potty training and I'm starting to get cabin fever (I'm sure the boys are as well). We had been getting out a lot before so now we always have a few hours each day where we just run out of fun stuff to do, so consequently we've also have been watching lots of TV. I'm not apologizing for it, it keeps us sane, I figure after we all get comfortable with this we'll start back with our old routines and way less TV!

Some art work the boys brought home from school, not exactly master pieces : )

1 comment:

nan cee said...

Sounds like the training is going very well! The picture on the earlier post my look different to you but I sure can't tell one from the other!
Love you all,
A. Nancy