Potty Training Part II

I think I may have made a big mistake with Kathleen's potty training. She's been refusing to use the potty and I have slipped into the habit of asking her if she wanted to wear nappies or knickers each morning, rather than get into a fight about using the potty and scaring her off it. Lately she chooses nappies every time. On the few occasions recently when she has worn knickers, I think she has forgotten she's not wearing nappies and has had accidents. All this has not been helped by a suspected urine infection last week.

So I'm wondering if she's still not ready and I should just give up and go back to nappies full time, or if I should persevere and stop offering the nappy option. Obviously using both is not working.

The other complicating factor is that Kathleen is wearing cloth nappies designed for 7-14kgs. She's only about 13kg and they fit her fine. But Victoria is nearing, if not already at, 7kg and needs to be wearing the large size now too. It's great that Victoria has been able to reuse all of Kathleen's old cloth nappies, but not so easy now that they're in the same size range. Especially given how many Vicky is going through each day. I am so sick of doing laundry!!!

-Megz

MAMA

Victoria said her first word today, or her first syllables of any kind really.

Wanna know what she said? MAMA. Or "muhmuhmuhmuh" to be precise.

And once she started, she just kept going. Probably because she got such a big reaction from me. She spent the evening tonight grinning and talking.

Uh oh. If she's anything like her big sister, now that she's started talking SHE WON'T STOP. Arrgh, my dreams of a quiet life are now well and truely shattered.

Cheers,
Megz

PS: Victoria has been blogging too

Starting Solids

Victoria turned six months old last Saturday. Hard to believe it's been six months already. She has grown up so much since then, and especially in the last month or so. She now sits up all on her own, and is so interactive with the rest of the family. She'll happily sit on her own and play with toys, but she also cries whenever I leave the room. She loves her big sister Kathleen so much. Her face lights up whenever anyone talks to her. She knows her own name and responds by turning around when you call her.

But with her growing up so quickly, I have been strangely slow to respond. Maybe I subconsciously want my baby to stay a baby for longer. While most if not all of the other babies in her coffee group have long since started solids, I waited until Victoria was almost six months old before she had her first meal. Partly it was because we've been so busy the last month or so that we didn't have time at the weekends for a big elaborate first meal. And as Peter missed out on Kathleen's first meal, I wanted him to be there for Victoria's.

So she had her first meal, of baby rice, on Saturday the 10th. And after all the buildup, she wasn't overly fussed about it. She just wanted to play with the spoon and chew on it. Didn't much care for what was actually on the spoon. Most of it ended up on her face!!!

Since then she has also tried apples and bananas. Didn't care much for the apples either, but quite likes bananas.

Although it took me a long time to get around to starting her on solid food, I have actually been preparing for it for quite a while. Every time we've have had vegetables for dinner lately, I have done up a huge batch and frozen part of it for Victoria to eat in time. Our freezer is now chock full of carrots and broccoli and parsnip and potatoes and kumara and pumpkin, and soon to also have the pureed leftovers from last night's beef casserole. Lots of good, hearty vegetables for the winter months. I hate the cold weather, but I do love the comfort food you get in winter.

One thing Victoria's still lagging behind in, is sleeping through the night. I am getting very tired of getting up in the middle of the night. However I've been rather lucky the last couple of nights she has slept through. Don't expect it will continue, but it's sure been nice to wake up feeling refreshed in the morning.

Cheers,
Megz

Potty Training

During the school holidays recently I decided to take the plunge and start potty training Kathleen. I figured we'd be home a lot during that time with no creche or playgroup to go to, and she could run around with just knickers on and the potty would always be right at hand if needed.

She was already half trained anyway. For about six months now she's been regularly using the potty, but still wearing nappies. I'd ask her during the day if she wanted to go potty, and if she said yes then we would, and if she said no then I wouldn't push her. This was working well enough and we could get through some days being completely dry.

However she also didn't have a problem with going in her nappy either and wouldn't tell me. I wasn't quite sure how to go about this whole potty training thing and kinda hoped that she would figure it out for herself.

But I realised that wearing nappies gave her no motivation to do so. So we took the plunge and bought her some knickers in order to force her to learn to use the potty every time.

The first week went really well. It was also the same routine we were used to, i.e. Kathleen would go potty when I reminded her, but never of her own volition. Week 2 we started having a few accidents. I hoped that would give her the motivation to learn to control herself, but when I asked her how it felt to have an accident in her pants she just said "good". Not the answer I really wanted to hear.

Week 3 we started having issues. Kathleen has started to dig her heels in and refuse to do anything we ask. Not just potty training but anything really - "sit down and eat your dinner" "no", "time for a bath" "no", "do you want to go potty" "no".

It came to a head last Thursday morning with her and I screaming at each other. She had a dry overnight nappy and I asked her to go potty before we got dressed for creche. She refused. I tried to make her, as I thought she was just testing the limits. She just screamed and screamed. I lost my temper as well. In the end I gave in, telling her that she'd have to wear a nappy if she wouldn't go potty. She was quite happy with this idea. So she wore a nappy and then proceeded to be uncomfortable all morning.

But has this changed anything? No. She still refuses to go potty quite often. I really don't know why. Is it too cold? Is she afraid of something? Does she not like being told what to do?

Any experienced mothers out there want to give me some thoughts?

Things have been a bit better this week, we haven't gotten into any more big fights anyway. If she refuses to go potty in the mornings now I just give her the choice of nappy or knickers. It's been 50/50 which one she chooses. I know the experts say that once you make the change you shouldn't go back, but I don't want to turn this whole thing into a battle and have it backfire altogether.

However on the brighter side, this week there have been several times when Kathleen has announced that she needs to go potty, and we have rushed off there immediately.

Hopefully we are making progress, but I guess this is going to be a long road.


-Megz

Back Online

Computer problems over ... time to sort photos found ... photos uploaded to Flickr today.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/repete/





-Megz