Wednesday, May 31, 2006
Sippy Free - The Way To Be
My concerns about Lauren's speech have led me to go 100% sippy cup free. It's quite liberating, actually. I was already pretty sick and tired of washing those damn valve thingies and then reassembling them - gah! And I hated forgetting that we'd had a sippy of milk in the car and then finding the nastiest cup of now-solid & chunky milk lodged under the seat 3 weeks later. I'm so over that routine. We are now drinking from regular, unlidded cups all the time. And I've put a temporary ban on straws, too. Straws and sippy cups encouraged Lauren to continue to use her tongue in a strange, newborn-nursing way when she drank. She doesn't do that with non-sippy cups. She protested using cups for a couple of days - pitching a royal fit in prime 2-yr old fashion - when I would pour her beloved milk (now pronounced "mit" instead of "bot" - progress?) into a cup vs. sippy. You see, it takes her much longer to drink a cup than a sippy. With a sippy, she could guzzle her beverage in one long, uninterrupted gulp. She's going to be a big success at future keggers. But with a cup she has to take breaks, if you will. She can't consume the whole cup at once. And, she has to sit at the table to drink. It's an unbreakable rule. She's doing really well remembering and not trying to walk around with her cup in hand like she did with her sippy. Plus, she's drinking less, which is a good thing from a diaper change point of view.
Speaking of diapers, they've become Lauren's new obsession. She's able to tell right after she's peed that it's happened. Right after, not before. Same with poop. Nice, eh? And she then wants an immediate diaper change - if we're home. If we're out and about then she's distracted and doesn't care or notice that she's peed a few drops into her diaper. But at home, when she pees then she goes and gets another diaper, takes the soiled one off (solid or not - ewww!) and brings me the new one to put on her. This morning, in fact, she came into our room at her normal waking time bearing the usuals - Baby, blankie, and a new addition: a fresh diaper. Just what a Mama wants to be woken up with - a diaper shoved under her nose with the demand for a change. What a lovely way to start the day. That was 6:30am. It's now 8:20am and she's on her 3rd diaper for the day.
We've put Lauren on the potty many, many times and encouraged her - bribed her - to produce something. A trickle. A drop, even. Nothing. It's never worked. But I'm thinking that her new-found ability to identify that she's peed/pooped immediately after (or maybe when it's happening, I can't tell) is the beginnings of being ready to potty train. God, I hope so. I'm so so SO ready to be a diaper-free house. But I loathe - LOATHE - the idea of a long, drawn-out potty-training effort. Starting too early, before the child is really ready, is torture. Who wants weeks/months of constantly taking the child to the bathroom and having to clean up multitudes of messes because they didn't make it to the toilet in time? Certainly not me. We waited with Nicholas until he was 3 - his 3rd birthday, in fact - and he was 95% trained within a week. That's how I like it - quick and easy. I doubt it will be as easy with Miss Lauren [sigh].
In a half-hearted attempt to maybe, just maybe, get the ball rolling on this I put her in the thick training pants underwear we had from the days of Nick's training. They're too big on her, but what the hell. Then I put a pull-on style wool cover that I crocheted to help with the inevitable leaks and wetness and try to keep my furniture pee-free. I'm hoping that putting her back in cloth will help her identify that she's peeing and she'll be so opposed to feeling wet that she'll start considering the potty. So in a way, I'm going back to cloth diapers - pull-up version. I may have to make another wool cover or two....
*** EDITED TO ADD*** Just now, as I type this, Lauren walked over to me and started peeing. On the carpet. The underwear and cover only prevented some of the urine from leaking out. Crap! err, I mean, Piss! This project might be aborted before noon at this rate.
Speaking of diapers, they've become Lauren's new obsession. She's able to tell right after she's peed that it's happened. Right after, not before. Same with poop. Nice, eh? And she then wants an immediate diaper change - if we're home. If we're out and about then she's distracted and doesn't care or notice that she's peed a few drops into her diaper. But at home, when she pees then she goes and gets another diaper, takes the soiled one off (solid or not - ewww!) and brings me the new one to put on her. This morning, in fact, she came into our room at her normal waking time bearing the usuals - Baby, blankie, and a new addition: a fresh diaper. Just what a Mama wants to be woken up with - a diaper shoved under her nose with the demand for a change. What a lovely way to start the day. That was 6:30am. It's now 8:20am and she's on her 3rd diaper for the day.
We've put Lauren on the potty many, many times and encouraged her - bribed her - to produce something. A trickle. A drop, even. Nothing. It's never worked. But I'm thinking that her new-found ability to identify that she's peed/pooped immediately after (or maybe when it's happening, I can't tell) is the beginnings of being ready to potty train. God, I hope so. I'm so so SO ready to be a diaper-free house. But I loathe - LOATHE - the idea of a long, drawn-out potty-training effort. Starting too early, before the child is really ready, is torture. Who wants weeks/months of constantly taking the child to the bathroom and having to clean up multitudes of messes because they didn't make it to the toilet in time? Certainly not me. We waited with Nicholas until he was 3 - his 3rd birthday, in fact - and he was 95% trained within a week. That's how I like it - quick and easy. I doubt it will be as easy with Miss Lauren [sigh].
In a half-hearted attempt to maybe, just maybe, get the ball rolling on this I put her in the thick training pants underwear we had from the days of Nick's training. They're too big on her, but what the hell. Then I put a pull-on style wool cover that I crocheted to help with the inevitable leaks and wetness and try to keep my furniture pee-free. I'm hoping that putting her back in cloth will help her identify that she's peeing and she'll be so opposed to feeling wet that she'll start considering the potty. So in a way, I'm going back to cloth diapers - pull-up version. I may have to make another wool cover or two....
*** EDITED TO ADD*** Just now, as I type this, Lauren walked over to me and started peeing. On the carpet. The underwear and cover only prevented some of the urine from leaking out. Crap! err, I mean, Piss! This project might be aborted before noon at this rate.
// posted by MP @ 8:12 AM 
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I can't tell you how many times I've started and stopped b/c Walker wasn't ready. I still don't have a potty trained kid and he is 3 1/2...it is a long tiring road!
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