Monday, December 16, 2013

Happy place

Right now, my 4 month old Georgie and my 2 year old Amelia are napping beside me, George in my arms, in our bed. I feel so very lucky and blessed at this moment. Definitely one to remember, amidst the chaos of young motherhood, we are rewarded with these sweet moments. I know I'll look back and miss this the most. Had to document it!

Tuesday, December 3, 2013

Toilet Training


Thought I'd give you an update on how our progress of potty training Amelia is going! I am very proud of her, She first peed in the potty about 1 month ago, after many months of "toilet education". We started changing Amelia in the bathroom once she was about 18 months and having her sit down on her toilet to practice the sitting and getting used to the idea in general. It took all the way until she was 23 months to sit and pee on the toilet, it was like, one of the most exciting things that's ever happened in my life!! 
We never did any intense all day marathons of going to the potty every 20 minutes, I wanted the process to be a bit more "organic" than that, and could never bring myself to buckle down and do the intense method for 3 days straight or whatever they say. Although I did doubt that she would ever do it and thought for a while that I WOULD have to do something like that. My plan began from a montessori method, which teaches that toilet training is very natural and does not NEED to be accompanied by intense regiments and lots of incentives. That being said, we did end up giving Amelia a treat when she uses the toilet correctly, so ya know we have tailored things to fit our needs a bit. And I will say that the reward idea has both positives and negatives ( asking for treats constantly, getting upset when she doesn't get one), can't really decide if it has helped us or not. (She gets a fruit snack when she goes).
I switched Amelia to undies after a day where she went pee in her toilet multiple times, the first day she  wore them she didn't use the toilet once, and I was really sad… but then a few days later we put them on again and had a much better time.  So she wears underwear at home during the day all the time now, and has very few "pee puddles" ( that's a montessori term that i like, and Amelia seems to like it too). She tends to have more poop accidents than wet ones right now. She does do BM's in the toilet  as well, though they are more rare. she gets TWO treats for that. So next up will be wearing undies out, right now I put a diaper over her underwear, she has yet to use a standard toilet, so that's still a trick…
I'm sure there's more details I could give you.. so ask if you want!
Yay for potty training!! -slash- it's a pretty big stress on me and Paul, but I'm glad we are doing it :)