WooHoo! Looks like we may finally be making potty training progress with Miss Faithyroo. She’s pretty close to Georgie territory on how long she’s been taking to train. Georgie was four months but Trinity was only a week, Anika one month, and Kyra two weeks start to finish. Faith here is somewhere around three months, I think. Actually looking up when we started would be way too depressing.

Anyway, she’s far enough along now that she’ll go one and two pretty consistently… as long as we ask her if she has to go every hour or fairly consistently. If we are doing something like say, feeding the baby or making dinner or doing something other than spending every moment watching her, then she goes merrily along her way and doesn’t bother telling us she has to go. This is not good for the furniture or her mother’s psychie.

So last Friday after she didn’t tell me and I found a surprise at naptime, I got pretty fried. One of Henry’s diapers was on the floor there, so I stuck it on her (he’s in 4’s) and deposited her in Henry’s crib with the admonishon that only babies go potty in their underwear and babies have to wear diapers and sleep in baby cribs. Wowee, should did not like that!!

She pretty much freaked out. Noooo, it’s Henry’s bed. I want my bed. This is Henry’s!!! I picked her up and plopped her flat on the matress because she wouldn’t lie down, and then attempted blankets. Well, that was met the same was as the crib itself, so I just left.

When I came to get her after nap, she was standing in the crib and had dumped everything else that was in there on the floor (of course). I’m pretty sure she didn’t sleep at all.

The next day, she was remarkably good and ooooh, came and told us when she had to go potty. That night she got a pullup and a big lecture about how good she’d been doing and was going to sleep in her own bed because big girls go potty in the potty. Twenty minutes later after I was done monkeying with the other kids, I picked her up and met ye olde stinkeroo. Argh!

So, I changed her and told her that she was going to have to sleep in Henry’s bed because that’s where babies who go potty in their undies or pullups have to sleep. She looked right at me and said, “I’m not a baby.” What did you just say? She repeated this to me three more times by the time I had her in bed. Ha! There’s the key. Finally, after three months, I think we may have found the key. Chocolate? Take it or leave it. Pretty big girls panties with butterflies and horses? Not terribly interesting. Wandering around in wet stinkiness? That’s okay. But the shame of having to sleep in your brother’s crib? Intolerable!

Since then she’s been pretty close to perfect. She had an oops at Babunya’s house Monday, but that’s pretty common when kids are learning. I’m not going to give her a bunch of grief about that until she’s really consistent at home. She’s starting to look like she’s making an effort at bed and naptime as well, so I’m expecting that to shape up here pretty soon as well. Yay!! This has been long and trying, and I’m glad that it seems to be nearly finished. Only one more child to go. At least that won’t be for awhile. Maybe he’ll be easy. One can dream, right?

Rachel

Written by Rachel Shubin ~ Fiendish friend for effusive fun!