week ending oct 22, 2006

Week ending October 22, 2006: This was a very big week for us. Chloe seems to be completely potty trained, she’s moved out of her crib into her big girl bed, Alex is peeing in the potty 80-90% of the time, and we went to a pumpkin patch. It all started Tuesday morning Chloe peed in the potty and asked to wear underpants. She has not had a single accident since. Before then she never seemed to be able to predict when she needed to use the potty, but if I happened to guess when she might need to go, she’d sometimes agree to sit on the potty. Now she tells us when she needs to go every time! When we bought the mattress sets for the kids, the kids were excited to sleep in them but I thought “the cribs keep them contained, they fit in the cribs, why should I have them wandering the house in the middle of the night unless they are potty training and need to get up to pee?”. So we told the kids that they couldn’t sleep in their big beds until they learned to use the potty. Apparently when we were in a store a few weeks ago, Chloe saw a night gown and I told her that she’d be too cold in a nightgown unless she was in her big girl bed with covers. She remembered that and as soon as she’d done one successful day of potty training, she said she wanted to get a nightgown and sleep in her big girl bed. We were so happy that she was taking the initiative in the potty training that we decided to reward her. Her 1st two nights in the bed were fitful, but now she seems acclimated. When Alex saw her using the potty so much he started to get interested too. He really wants to sleep in his big bed also, but so far he has never done a poop in the potty, always in his diaper. The big change has been somewhat stressful on all of us. Everything takes longer since we seem to always be waiting for someone to finish on the potty (our 3 hour trip to the mall involved 3 potty visits, each lasting 10-15 minutes). Whenever one of us is in the bathroom, at least 3 people end up being in the bathroom. The kids are not very independent yet about getting dressed and undressed, or setting up the potty seats, or wiping, or washing their hands. It seems that we parents are constantly being pulled in two directions at once because the kids either both need help with the potty at the same time, or one needs help on the potty and the other needs help with something else. The kids 1st visit to a pumpkin patch went well save for showing up an hour late because we couldn’t get the kids off the potty and one potty accident by Alex.