PT R2

My daughter potty trained during Covid at 2.5 years old. Also, I got tired of paying for diapers for two after about six to eight months. After she potty trained, I told myself I was going to potty train my son by the time he was 21 months old - by the end of the next calendar year. 

Haha. Jokes on me. 

Here we are nearly two years later from my initial ambitious thought, and almost two months into the process since we started. In the beginning, it felt promising because he was going potty on the toilet and staying dry. However, I was reminding him and setting timers every 30-45 minutes. We soon realized, this was not true potty training as he would not go unless we reminded or asked him. The instant we forgot, he had wet bottoms.

This continued for about a month with reminders when we remembered and wet clothes when we didn't. I then started incentivizing him with candy. This definitely made a difference and he started to take initiative in going to the potty instead of only when we reminded him. We kept continuing to keep up good habits at home but wearing a diaper when we went out in public, especially for extended periods of time.

I remember watching the lead teacher give skittles to kids in our 18-24m 
old class when they could communicate their need to use the 
restroom. And now it's my reward for my own children.   

The real progress appeared one morning when I had a two-hour board meeting via Zoom. So although I was merely feet away from my children, I couldn't help them do much. I did notice my son go to the bathroom at least once in my meeting.

When I witness small wins like this in parenting and life, it warms my heart, because they're little reminders I have succeeded as a parent. When they no longer need my reminders and will do what they're supposed to do (something as simple as peeing into the toilet and not into the underwear), it's a little preview of what I hope the rest of their life looks like. 

Potty training my son took much longer than it took my daughter, but it was actually much less stressful. There was way more laundry and soiled clothing to wash but much less yelling and crying. We are far from being a diaper-free household as he still needs one at night, but it still saves a huge chunk of change to not be changing diapers during the daytime. 

Mute Magic and Other Musings

Every now and then homeownership becomes more of a burden than a privilege. Lately it has felt like that. Yesterday I decided I wanted to clean out the gutters so my husband helped me set up the ladder and I pulled out all the leaves and branches which had accumulated over the last year. It wasn’t hard, but it’s not glamorous work, especially when it’s 100 degrees outside. My one small victory is that everything I pull out of the gutter goes straight into my composter. As I discovered years ago, the gutter is a wonderful place for compost to decompose, but an abomination to water flow when full of compost. 

When I got to my last downspout, I saw that a lot of the debris had piled on top of the opening. Chances are it was inside the downspout, too. So we proceeded to unhook our rain barrel hose attachment and I watched this brick of compost slide down the inside of the gutter. Unfortunately for us, it got stuck on the way down so we had to unscrew the bottom of the gutter and jiggle it out. It was like our gutter pooped out some compost. 

Look at the color of that dirt. Believe it or not, it came out of my gutter.

See how dark that color is? It’s quite extraordinary. Im pretty sure the quality of that soil is better than the quality of potting mix I purchased from the store. As I mentioned earlier, wonderful place for decomposition to occur, but a nightmare for drainage. 

While unclogging the gutter, I also discovered a leak in our hose. It must’ve happened that afternoon in the heat because I had just used the hose that morning and everything was fine. Well, that was a bummer. However, the hose has a lifetime warranty so I was able to claim that and receive some money back for it. I actually still have the original receipt from 7 years ago. 

They require a picture of your house taken out of commission.
If you look carefully, you can see where it burst.

Later in the evening, I noticed our kitchen sink was falling down. It's an undermount sink so it's glued to the underside of our kitchen counter. Of course it would be ours that falls down within six years of being installed. Ironically, we used a car jack stand which was almost the perfect height to prop the kitchen sink back up so it wouldn't be half dangling in the cabinet. The saddest part is it would be cheaper for us to buy another jack stand to use for the car than to hire someone to come out and reglue the kitchen sink. So what's the trade-off? We lose a good portion of our under-sink cabinet storage space. 

You can't really tell that something is holding up our sink....right?

For now, this is going to do because we have no desire to drop hundreds of dollars to pay someone to reglue our kitchen sink, especially not because we found a quick fix that does exactly the same thing for $0 cost to us for now. Eventually down the road or one day when we sell the house, it'll need to be done, but for now, we'll just lose a portion of our cabinet space. 

That evening after bath time, I decided to play a little game with my daughter. Instead of speaking to her, I started mouthing words to her. I'd see the videos on social media where parents mess with their kids and trick them into thinking they're deaf to their parents voices. Or that they've become invisible. While that wasn't my goal, I was curious what she would do. So for the rest of the evening as I got her ready for bed, I didn't say anything audible. She could see my mouth moving and mouthing words, and someone who has a strong sense of lip reading could have communicated with me almost perfectly. But you know what conclusion I found? Bedtime was smoother than it normally is. On any other day she likes to give me a lot of nonsense about using the toilet before bed or brushing her own teeth instead of letting me help her or wanting specific items in her room put in specific places. That night was the easiest, most straightforward, she's ever gone to bed. 

Now parents, I'm not suggesting you go mute on your children and expect them to behave 5x better than normal. But I am proposing the idea that the best listening skills sometimes come out when there is "nothing" to listen to. 

It's been quite the week, y'all. 

Mamalogues: Free-Range Children

Recently, we started something new in our house: we don't make our toddler sit and eat in a high chair for 1-2 meals a day. Why did we do this? Because it took her so long to finish her meals in the high chair and we were having more behavior issues in the chair than out.

So we changed strategies. We let her run around, play, whatever she wants essentially, except she can't touch my piano while she's eating regardless if she's touched food with her hands or not. And the results are pretty drastic. Meals in the high chair would last 1-2 hours because it took forever for her to sit still and finish her food. Free-range meals would be done in 30 minutes to an hour depending on which meal it was. Everyone was overall more pleased with the situation.

Why wouldn't they be? We all want our free-range chicken. It's more humane. The chickens are happier and healthier. And the meat tastes better. Not that we're going to eat our children (we are NOT eating our children), but letting her run around freely while eating has led to more successful meals in our house. 

Apparently, more of my mom friends have been allowing their children to do this. I clearly missed the memo as I thought kids should eat in their high chairs and then be freed when they finished. Maybe this is why my childhood was "unhappy" and I had negative food associations for a very long time. That's another story. 

So now we let her roam around the house while she eats. We let her play outside in a tent or sit in her jeep. We let her sit on the stools at the counter. We let her sit in her learning tower and eat. It's fun, she's happier during meal times, and I think she actually eats more.

My free-range child 💕

Anyone else out there raising free-range children? 😃