I suppose I should really say, "I loved to hate it."
Why, you may ask? See for yourself.
That's right. A perfect record. It only took two and a half years at school, and - damn it - it was worth every single second of the wait.
Showing posts with label diaper. Show all posts
Showing posts with label diaper. Show all posts
Monday, October 8, 2012
Loved to Hate It
Every week since she turned three, The Princess has brought home a potty chart in her backpack. This evil little scrap of paper loves to mock all of our efforts, and I love to hate it.
I suppose I should really say, "I loved to hate it."
Why, you may ask? See for yourself.
That's right. A perfect record. It only took two and a half years at school, and - damn it - it was worth every single second of the wait.
I suppose I should really say, "I loved to hate it."
Why, you may ask? See for yourself.
That's right. A perfect record. It only took two and a half years at school, and - damn it - it was worth every single second of the wait.
Monday, September 24, 2012
The Princess and the Pee: Part Two
Whatever you do, don't read this out loud. She'll hear you, and the spell could be broken. I hesitate to even type it.
Remember when I told you about how long The Princess has been using diapers of some kind?
And then when I got all excited about our recent potty training efforts and the leaps and bounds our girl has made?
For the last solid week, The Princess has been prancing around her world sans training pants. Did you hear that? We're only using Pull-Ups at bedtime now.
She's using the potty consistently, and there's a glint in her eye that says she gets it. She's proud.
She even holds it when we're out for a walk at the state park. For two hours.
On Saturday, she had her first pit toilet experience (You know, the ones that are like glorified outhouses? The ones that blow cold air up your butt and look like a 41-lb skinny minny of a thing could fall right in and never make it out? Mm-hmm. One of those.).
She'd been riding in her stroller over some really rough terrain for a couple of miles. We're talking straight up and down, bumpy stuff...yeah, that's right, we took her all-terrain stroller on the most difficult part of the trails. And it was awesome. I can still feel it in my shoulders.
We came up to a potty house, and The Hubbs and I could tell it was going to be pit toilets by the look of it. The Princess, however, hadn't experienced these things before. As I ran with her to the potty, she was getting visibly more excited by the moment. Her bottom was dry, and she was getting antsy.
I opened the door, she took one look around and tried to bolt. Fortunately, I caught her and was able to explain the situation. She very cautiously walked around the toilet on all sides, casting suspicious glances into its fragrant depths before looking up at me with one last plea.
"I can tell you have to go potty, Princess," I told her. "It's either this or have an accident in your pants, because it's going to be a while yet before we get back to the big building where we started."
She thought about this for only a moment before dropping her pants and hoisting her little bottom up onto the tall pot. The look on her face as the cold air hit her bottom was priceless.
It took a few seconds, but she went. And went. And went.
Grinning from ear to ear, she hopped off the pot and pulled up her panties and pants. She then proceeded to do laps around the toilet in an effort to figure out how to flush. I did my best to explain that this kind of toilet doesn't have a flusher, and she listened intently.
Finally, she decided that closing the lid would have to do. Leaving the little outhouse, we skipped back to her daddy, hand in hand, to complete our hike.
If my pride isn't evident through my words, maybe hers will be in this picture.
I am so unbelievably proud of this little girl, and I am once again in awe of how much the little things impact our lives every single day.
After nearly five and a half years of diapers and three to four years of potty training, we've arrived. I can't imagine any other victory that could be this sweet.
Remember when I told you about how long The Princess has been using diapers of some kind?
And then when I got all excited about our recent potty training efforts and the leaps and bounds our girl has made?
For the last solid week, The Princess has been prancing around her world sans training pants. Did you hear that? We're only using Pull-Ups at bedtime now.
She's using the potty consistently, and there's a glint in her eye that says she gets it. She's proud.
She even holds it when we're out for a walk at the state park. For two hours.
On Saturday, she had her first pit toilet experience (You know, the ones that are like glorified outhouses? The ones that blow cold air up your butt and look like a 41-lb skinny minny of a thing could fall right in and never make it out? Mm-hmm. One of those.).
She'd been riding in her stroller over some really rough terrain for a couple of miles. We're talking straight up and down, bumpy stuff...yeah, that's right, we took her all-terrain stroller on the most difficult part of the trails. And it was awesome. I can still feel it in my shoulders.
We came up to a potty house, and The Hubbs and I could tell it was going to be pit toilets by the look of it. The Princess, however, hadn't experienced these things before. As I ran with her to the potty, she was getting visibly more excited by the moment. Her bottom was dry, and she was getting antsy.
I opened the door, she took one look around and tried to bolt. Fortunately, I caught her and was able to explain the situation. She very cautiously walked around the toilet on all sides, casting suspicious glances into its fragrant depths before looking up at me with one last plea.
"I can tell you have to go potty, Princess," I told her. "It's either this or have an accident in your pants, because it's going to be a while yet before we get back to the big building where we started."
She thought about this for only a moment before dropping her pants and hoisting her little bottom up onto the tall pot. The look on her face as the cold air hit her bottom was priceless.
It took a few seconds, but she went. And went. And went.
Grinning from ear to ear, she hopped off the pot and pulled up her panties and pants. She then proceeded to do laps around the toilet in an effort to figure out how to flush. I did my best to explain that this kind of toilet doesn't have a flusher, and she listened intently.
Finally, she decided that closing the lid would have to do. Leaving the little outhouse, we skipped back to her daddy, hand in hand, to complete our hike.
If my pride isn't evident through my words, maybe hers will be in this picture.
I am so unbelievably proud of this little girl, and I am once again in awe of how much the little things impact our lives every single day.
After nearly five and a half years of diapers and three to four years of potty training, we've arrived. I can't imagine any other victory that could be this sweet.
Tuesday, September 4, 2012
Another Victory
With the exception of a handful of days, we've been swimming every single day this summer. Living a couple of blocks off the lake has turned out to be our saving grace this year. The Princess couldn't be happier than when she's in the water, and The Hubbs and I have come to depend upon it as well.
Our plans for Labor Day weekend included one thing: swimming. We wanted nothing more than to see how many hours we could spend at the lake over these last four days.
And then...
On Friday afternoon, we were at our neighborhood beach for about ten minutes or so before a guy came by on his boat telling us that he had received an email saying that the lake had been closed due to a bloom of blue-green algae that can be harmful to people.
We got out of the lake and went home, showering thoroughly to avoid any adverse effects. Checking the all-knowing Internet, our fears were confirmed: the lake was closed until further notice.
This is how we had planned to spend the long weekend:
Instead, we had to come up with alternatives. There were quite a few hits and quite a few misses along the way, but one alternative afternoon activity just kills me.
On Sunday, our girl was restless. She saw me outside watering my flowers and began to fuss. I called inside to The Hubbs, and we decided it would be a good idea to let her play in the sprinkler. She came out in her favorite ruffle-bottom bathing suit and had an absolute blast.
Our front yard is fenced in, so it's pretty great for our purposes. We let The Princess have her fun where we could keep an eye on her from the living room. Every couple of minutes, we'd see our girl grinning and running through the sprinkler, happily stimmy-fliddling little droplets of water.
And then...
The Hubbs peeked out the front window and exclaimed, "What the...?"
Well, naturally, I had to get up to see what was going on. And, boy, am I glad I did.
Stepping out onto our front stoop, I took in the view. The ruffly bottom of our girl's swim suit was lying discarded near the sprinkler, and she was streaking across the front yard and cackling at the top of her lungs.
Once we wrangled the streaker, we noticed something else was awry.
Mm-hmm.
The only question at that point was: where is it?
I took her inside, plopped her on the pink froggy potty to finish her business, cleaned up her little bottom, and got her set up with a new pair of panties and a Pull-Up. Leaving her with The Hubbs, I took a strip of TP out into the front yard to commence my search.
There it was, not far from where we caught her running, smack in the middle of the front yard. As I bent down to pick it up, this whole situation struck me as the funniest thing I'd ever heard.
I mean, here we are, trying so very hard to potty-train our girl. Each day, we celebrate tiny little victories like thinking to pull our pants down when we have to go.
Really, what was so wrong with this? In the middle of the front yard, in full view of the road and all of our neighbors, our little girl dropped trou and pooped. Because she had to.
It's all in our perception, y'all. This could have been a hugely negative experience for some people, but me...I prefer to see it as another victory.
Oh, and P.S. Her doggies are very proud of her. They've decided she's finally worthy of the title Bulldog In Training.
Our plans for Labor Day weekend included one thing: swimming. We wanted nothing more than to see how many hours we could spend at the lake over these last four days.
And then...
On Friday afternoon, we were at our neighborhood beach for about ten minutes or so before a guy came by on his boat telling us that he had received an email saying that the lake had been closed due to a bloom of blue-green algae that can be harmful to people.
We got out of the lake and went home, showering thoroughly to avoid any adverse effects. Checking the all-knowing Internet, our fears were confirmed: the lake was closed until further notice.
This is how we had planned to spend the long weekend:
Instead, we had to come up with alternatives. There were quite a few hits and quite a few misses along the way, but one alternative afternoon activity just kills me.
On Sunday, our girl was restless. She saw me outside watering my flowers and began to fuss. I called inside to The Hubbs, and we decided it would be a good idea to let her play in the sprinkler. She came out in her favorite ruffle-bottom bathing suit and had an absolute blast.
Our front yard is fenced in, so it's pretty great for our purposes. We let The Princess have her fun where we could keep an eye on her from the living room. Every couple of minutes, we'd see our girl grinning and running through the sprinkler, happily stimmy-fliddling little droplets of water.
And then...
The Hubbs peeked out the front window and exclaimed, "What the...?"
Well, naturally, I had to get up to see what was going on. And, boy, am I glad I did.
Stepping out onto our front stoop, I took in the view. The ruffly bottom of our girl's swim suit was lying discarded near the sprinkler, and she was streaking across the front yard and cackling at the top of her lungs.
Once we wrangled the streaker, we noticed something else was awry.
Mm-hmm.
The only question at that point was: where is it?
I took her inside, plopped her on the pink froggy potty to finish her business, cleaned up her little bottom, and got her set up with a new pair of panties and a Pull-Up. Leaving her with The Hubbs, I took a strip of TP out into the front yard to commence my search.
There it was, not far from where we caught her running, smack in the middle of the front yard. As I bent down to pick it up, this whole situation struck me as the funniest thing I'd ever heard.
I mean, here we are, trying so very hard to potty-train our girl. Each day, we celebrate tiny little victories like thinking to pull our pants down when we have to go.
Really, what was so wrong with this? In the middle of the front yard, in full view of the road and all of our neighbors, our little girl dropped trou and pooped. Because she had to.
It's all in our perception, y'all. This could have been a hugely negative experience for some people, but me...I prefer to see it as another victory.
Oh, and P.S. Her doggies are very proud of her. They've decided she's finally worthy of the title Bulldog In Training.
Tuesday, August 7, 2012
Who's Counting?
5 years, 3 months, 27 days: this is the current running count of how long we've been using diapers of some sort in this house.
1: this is the number of children in this house.
10: this is about the average number of diaper-type contraptions she's gone through on a daily basis for the last 5 years, 3 months, 27 days.
Some days, it gets so frustrating I could just scream. There are those days when it seems like every time I turn around, she's wet. No matter how many times she sits on her pink froggy potty (with this cute little face that mocks me relentlessly), she just can't seem to make it happen.
And then there are other days. It's like a switch; we're going to have a good day or a bad day. There is no in between. Typically, the stellar days are followed immediately by the rip-your-hair-out fests that leave us all exhausted by dinner time.
We have a budget for Pull-Ups, which we routinely break, but somehow I just can't bring myself to raise that number.
44: the number of generic potty training pants in a package that should last us two weeks in between paychecks.
13: the number of generic potty training pants remaining after less than one full week.
These were the numbers running through my head as The Hubbs and I discussed where the extra "dipe money" was going to come from last week (for those of you who are interested, we raided our gas fund).
Something has got to give. The Fabulous Mrs. G insisted at the end of last school year that our girl had no need for Pull-Ups at school anymore. We didn't understand how. Home has always been different somehow. Home is the land of regression and slipping effortlessly into old habits.
We've tried everything at one point or another. Everything.
Somehow, it seems like we consistently try things too early, and if we have the presence of mind to revisit them at a later date, we're nearly always pleasantly surprised.
And that's the phase I'm in right now: pleasantly surprised.
4: the number of days our girl has been wearing panties (under her generic potty pants)
3: the average number of soiled panties/dipes per day since we started this time
3: the number of dry nights in a row, including last night
I'm aware of the fact that these things ebb and flow (pardon the pun), and that I just need to roll with it. I'm aware of the fact that The Princess is not any of the other kids I know who were potty-trained at lightning speed during any part of almost four years we've been working on this skill in our little yellow house. I'm aware of the possibility that typing this all out loud could very well invite a hair-pulling bad day back in where things have been going so well.
I'm aware of all these things, but I just had to share this with you. Why? Because I really think you'll understand. Because, even though things are going well, sometimes it's easy to dwell on the negative.
Because, without sitting down and putting this into words, I wouldn't be able to see the biggest number clearly.
5 years, 3 months, 27 days: this is the running count of how long I've been a momma, the running count of time since my world changed forever. This is the running count of my new life, of time elapsed at the most important and fulfilling job I'll ever have.
But who's counting?
1: this is the number of children in this house.
10: this is about the average number of diaper-type contraptions she's gone through on a daily basis for the last 5 years, 3 months, 27 days.
Some days, it gets so frustrating I could just scream. There are those days when it seems like every time I turn around, she's wet. No matter how many times she sits on her pink froggy potty (with this cute little face that mocks me relentlessly), she just can't seem to make it happen.
And then there are other days. It's like a switch; we're going to have a good day or a bad day. There is no in between. Typically, the stellar days are followed immediately by the rip-your-hair-out fests that leave us all exhausted by dinner time.
We have a budget for Pull-Ups, which we routinely break, but somehow I just can't bring myself to raise that number.
44: the number of generic potty training pants in a package that should last us two weeks in between paychecks.
13: the number of generic potty training pants remaining after less than one full week.
These were the numbers running through my head as The Hubbs and I discussed where the extra "dipe money" was going to come from last week (for those of you who are interested, we raided our gas fund).
Something has got to give. The Fabulous Mrs. G insisted at the end of last school year that our girl had no need for Pull-Ups at school anymore. We didn't understand how. Home has always been different somehow. Home is the land of regression and slipping effortlessly into old habits.
We've tried everything at one point or another. Everything.
Somehow, it seems like we consistently try things too early, and if we have the presence of mind to revisit them at a later date, we're nearly always pleasantly surprised.
And that's the phase I'm in right now: pleasantly surprised.
4: the number of days our girl has been wearing panties (under her generic potty pants)
3: the average number of soiled panties/dipes per day since we started this time
3: the number of dry nights in a row, including last night
I'm aware of the fact that these things ebb and flow (pardon the pun), and that I just need to roll with it. I'm aware of the fact that The Princess is not any of the other kids I know who were potty-trained at lightning speed during any part of almost four years we've been working on this skill in our little yellow house. I'm aware of the possibility that typing this all out loud could very well invite a hair-pulling bad day back in where things have been going so well.
I'm aware of all these things, but I just had to share this with you. Why? Because I really think you'll understand. Because, even though things are going well, sometimes it's easy to dwell on the negative.
Because, without sitting down and putting this into words, I wouldn't be able to see the biggest number clearly.
5 years, 3 months, 27 days: this is the running count of how long I've been a momma, the running count of time since my world changed forever. This is the running count of my new life, of time elapsed at the most important and fulfilling job I'll ever have.
But who's counting?
Monday, December 12, 2011
3...and the Potty
Three days until graduation.
*
So many things happened this weekend, I don't really even know where to start. I guess I'll just start at the beginning and split into separate posts for each accomplishment.
Really. They're all that big.
Well, here goes.
After work on Friday, I looked at The Princess and asked her if she had to go potty. I wasn't expecting any more of a reaction than simple eye contact. I'm not new here. I know how this goes.
Not only did I receive the expected eye contact, but she also smiled, walked across the room, pulled her pants down, sat on her pink froggy potty, and went.
For those of you who may be missing the magnitude of this event, let me spell it out a little more clearly for you.
My girl followed a verbal request. My girl. Verbal. No coaxing. No leading. No modeling. I asked her something, she immediately understood, and she did it.
Now, going on past experience, I'm well aware of the fact that these breakthroughs can sometimes be a shot in the dark. Some people call them "Elvis sightings," a term with which I am in love. It's the perfect explanation. You never know when or where they're going to happen, but when they do, it's amazing. And you never know if they'll happen again. Like, ever.
Let me just reassure you here: this was no Elvis sighting. By Sunday, she was pulling her pants down and walking to the potty herself when she had to go. Okay, so the sequence is something we have to work on. We don't want her letting the cat out in public to show she has to go potty, but, hey...this is progress.
Baby steps, y'all. Gigantic, wonderful baby steps.
*
So many things happened this weekend, I don't really even know where to start. I guess I'll just start at the beginning and split into separate posts for each accomplishment.
Really. They're all that big.
Well, here goes.
After work on Friday, I looked at The Princess and asked her if she had to go potty. I wasn't expecting any more of a reaction than simple eye contact. I'm not new here. I know how this goes.
Not only did I receive the expected eye contact, but she also smiled, walked across the room, pulled her pants down, sat on her pink froggy potty, and went.
For those of you who may be missing the magnitude of this event, let me spell it out a little more clearly for you.
My girl followed a verbal request. My girl. Verbal. No coaxing. No leading. No modeling. I asked her something, she immediately understood, and she did it.
Now, going on past experience, I'm well aware of the fact that these breakthroughs can sometimes be a shot in the dark. Some people call them "Elvis sightings," a term with which I am in love. It's the perfect explanation. You never know when or where they're going to happen, but when they do, it's amazing. And you never know if they'll happen again. Like, ever.
Let me just reassure you here: this was no Elvis sighting. By Sunday, she was pulling her pants down and walking to the potty herself when she had to go. Okay, so the sequence is something we have to work on. We don't want her letting the cat out in public to show she has to go potty, but, hey...this is progress.
Baby steps, y'all. Gigantic, wonderful baby steps.
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Progress
The Princess is four and a half years old.
Every day since she was born, The Hubbs and I have continued pulling diaper duty. Sure, she's been wearing Pull-Ups since we started potty training three years ago (please don't ask how that's going right now), but they're diapers just the same.
Just a rough estimate: 1642 days of changing diapers so far.
And just when I thought changing time could no longer surprise me, for the first time ever, she lifted her butt to help me get her new diaper on.
It was earlier this year, and somehow it managed to go unmentioned.
She has done it every day since.
Progress in my world may not be the same as it is in yours. Here, it's the little things, the ones that so many people take for granted, which bring the most pride and joy.
Every day since she was born, The Hubbs and I have continued pulling diaper duty. Sure, she's been wearing Pull-Ups since we started potty training three years ago (please don't ask how that's going right now), but they're diapers just the same.
Just a rough estimate: 1642 days of changing diapers so far.
And just when I thought changing time could no longer surprise me, for the first time ever, she lifted her butt to help me get her new diaper on.
It was earlier this year, and somehow it managed to go unmentioned.
She has done it every day since.
Progress in my world may not be the same as it is in yours. Here, it's the little things, the ones that so many people take for granted, which bring the most pride and joy.
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