How I Potty Trained a Freshly-Turned 3 Year Old

I thought she would go to Kindergarten in diapers.  I really did.  We begged and pleaded and bribed and sat and pleaded and bribed and begged some more.  NOTHING DOING.  This girl wasn't ditching the diapers for Starbursts, Little People Carriages, or even offers for anything she wanted.  I couldn't understand it.  Girls were supposed to be way more advanced on this stuff than boys.  She was supposed to potty train herself at 18 months, for crying out loud.  Her brother was 2 1/2 when he traded the Pampers for the Spiderman.  She was now 3.  And, it was slightly ridiculous.  Not even slightly.  I was so done with her not being potty trained. 

Wouldn't YOU be ready to see this face regularly if you were a toilet?!

But, as I might have mentioned previously, no amount of any efforts on my part were going to make a difference in that stubborn little mind.  And, so, I had given up.  "She'll go when she's ready," my mom kept saying.  I guess so.  I figured by the time we moved and had gotten settled, we could try again.  She'd only be 1/2 way to 4.  Who cares, right?

And, so it was very innocently one Monday afternoon in mid-June when Mr. A asked me if THIS was the week he was going to gymnastics camp.  "Not this week, I replied, but next week."  Miss M happened to be within earshot and quickly piped up, "I want to go to gymnastics camp!  Mommy, I go, too, with Mr. A?"

"No, you can only go to gymnastics camp if you go on the potty ALL the time - every single time - and wear big girl panties."

"Fine, Mom.  I do it.  I go ALLL the time.  I go get my big girl panties right now."

She had one week and I figured we'd see.  Gymnastics camp hung over her head like the biggest dangling carrot ever.  A few accidents here and there in the next 5 days, but wouldn't you know that this little girl got to go to gymnastics camp the following week with her big brother and did not have one accident.  Not even a squirt. 

Her best buddy, Mr. A., took her every time she needed to go.  He has a good heart, that Mr. A.  And, the 2 of them have a pretty tight squeeze on one another's hearts. 

I'm pretty sure they held hands just like this every time he took her to the bathroom.  Love these two.

I will most certainly not win any Mother of the Year Awards for how I potty trained my first daughter.  I don't care, though.  I bought her potty training-ness for a pretty penny.  And wish I'd done it 6 months earlier. 

Miss M, for the record, you were worth every penny anyway!  Sure love you!

Little by Little

My sister-in-law, Kelly, inspired me to post again.  She does it every day.  She's that kinda gal - she went from absolutely nothing to every day something.  I told her I didn't want to use my blog to whine.  She said sometimes that's what it's for, even if it's just a little something.  So, I'll start with my favorite little something.

Baby S.  She turned 1 on July 25.  1. Yes, 1 year old.  Time marches so quickly on.  I love it and I hate it all at the same time.  She is a peanut of a gal.  She weighed 19 lbs 2 oz at her check up.  She's in the 20th percentile for weight.  But, she was in the 75th percentile for height.  Go figure.  No teeth - not a one in sight, even.  She's crawling all over.  In the last 2 weeks she has started pulling herself up and letting us "walk" her around while her tiny little hands hold on to our index fingers on either side for stability.  I can make a little Bam-Bam pony tail on the top of her head.  And sometimes she'll even leave the bow in for 5 or 10 minutes.  Until she remembers it's there and pulls it out, tries to put it back in by putting it on top of her head, and then hands it to me to put back in and repeat that game until I'm done.  She L-O-V-E-D her birthday cupcake.  The big one I was planning to make her got packed up in the hundreds of thousands of pounds of stuff that is in storage, but a homemade yellow one with chocolate frosting sufficed.  We celebrated her 2 nights in a row.  Lucky girl.  And, lucky mom.  I love nothing more than watching a newly-minted 1-year-old smoosh that frosting and cake all over their face.  My son wanted nothing to do with it.  My girls, on the other hand.  Can't get enough.  And Baby S performed both nights.  Cake crumbles and frosting remnants all over tiny hands, and chubby cheeks, and a toothless wonder smile shining through.  I love my Baby S so much.  She is so entertained by her brother and sister, yet so into doing things in her own way and even by herself.  She gets fed when she claps (her way of signing "more"), and even other times if she can scream over the others.  She drinks her juice from her sippy and loves to chew on her toothbrush, even though she doesn't yet need it.  No teeth does not stop her from enjoying the finer things in life, however.  She still eats chicken nuggets, cheese, yogurt, peas, corn, cinnamon raisin toast, saltine crackers, pretzels, quesadillas, rice and beans, olives, ramen noodles, chicken noodle soup, etc, etc.  She just sucks a little longer, I guess, to soften it right up!  I'm pretty sure it's a testament of her tenacity and patience. 

And on to my next little something.  That little thing with a roof where we put beds and toys and belongings and make memories.  A house.  I think I miss my old house because we have yet to find a new one.  Well, I guess we've found one, but the powers that be are just taking their sweet time to realize that it's ours.  My DH is working his hardest on that one and it will all work out.  We'd really like for it to be sooner rather than later, though.  More on that if it works out.

My last little thing of the night.  My friends.  My sweet, Philadelphia-forever friends.  They'll never leave.  And, we'll likely never move back.  I'm starting to come to grips with that.  Little by little. The night I said goodbye to one of my best ones and walked back into the hotel at 3:00 AM (when we went back to pack up the house. I mean supervise others packing the house and loading the truck. we hung with friends as much as we could) my last night there, I'd been crying so hard and for so long that the hotel night clerk took one look at me and asked if I'd just broken up with my boyfriend.  No, sir, it's much worse than that.  Much, much sadder.  I then took my cryfest upstairs and sobbed into my DH's shirt for quite some time.  I didn't sleep that night.  It was finally real.  We were leaving.  I cried some more on the way to the airport and then when the plane took off.  And I still have days where I can't fight back the crocodile tears.  But, they are becoming fewer.  And, as I told a dear friend today - sometimes the right thing and the hard thing are the same thing.  And, thus it is for me.

I think that's all I've got for now.  Thanks, Kel.  Come back next time for a much more upbeat account of life in the place where I spent my first 65* and cloudy birthday EVER.  :)