Potty Training, Part 2

So, Gabe was potty trained after a week of movies.  He continued to have the occasional accident or wet bed, but these dwindled slowly away.  To be on the safe side, when we took a car trip to Michigan, Gabe wore pull-ups, but as it turned out, they were unnecessary.  Gabe continued to use the toddler potty for a couple of months, but I finally got tired of cleaning it, so I encouraged him to switch to the big potty, and he did so with surprising enthusiasm.  He even insisted on not using the toddler seat or stepping stool, choosing instead to balance precariously while doing his business.  Good job Gabe!

I took this all for granted until Gabe came down with a really nasty bought of diarrhea.  To be fair, he had had diarrhea a few times previously, and on most of the occasions had done a remarkable job of getting himself to a potty in time.  But this time. . . let's just say that one of that week's library books couldn't be returned.  I had Gabe in the shower to hose him off, and he just continued to dribble uncontrollably there in the bathtub, poor guy.

I had assumed that this was just a one-off bout of unpleasantness, as most diarrhea is.  We put him back in a pull-up diaper just in case, but otherwise were promptly distracted by the loss of power, brought on by the wet snow that fell right before Halloween.  The snow fell on trees that still had their leaves, and the trees came down, leaving a third of our town in the dark.  Chris chopped firewood and we build ourselves beds in the basement in front of a roaring fire.  Gabe's tummy issues were forgotten until the middle of that cold, dark night.

I had just finished a long struggle to get Kaylee to sleep, so Chris took Gabe upstairs to get him cleaned up.  There was yelling.  And more yelling.  Finally I went up, and found what looked like a scene from the Blair Witch Project, as Chris was attempting to depoopify the freezing cold child with wipes and a flashlight.

Thank the FSM for our gas-powered heater.  A hot shower made everything better that night.  But Gabe's tummy ick turned into vomiting the next day.  For the next ten days the poor dude had an eruption from both ends every twelve hours, like clockwork.  He lost his appetite and even getting water into him was tough at times.  As a result, he was only using the potty twice a day.  It went on long enough that he developed his own illness lingo.  "Mommy, I have beans" was his way of saying he had just vomited, or was about to.  I guess the texture seemed bean-like to him.  His other goofy word was "throats".  As in, "Mommy, I have throats!"  I learned that a hand on his throat meant send in the bucket, quick.

I was so. Very. Glad. To be done with the mess and misery, that it hardly seemed like a big deal when Gabe woke up with a good appetite in a soggy bed.  He then peed his pants.  And again.  And again.  Day after day.  There were days where he woke up dry, but that was only because he had wet the bed during the night and had already been cleaned up.  The bathtub featured an ever-present pile of pee-soaked clothes.

 I would try to force Gabe to sit on the potty before outings, because I didn't want him to pee in the car.  Ironically, he never had an accident while outside of the house, with one exception.  But Gabe would under no circumstance be forced into peeing.  My efforts resulted in some of his most outstanding tantrums to date.  Chris and I both got angry at Gabe, and as a result we were all miserable, and absolutely no progress was made.

At this point I should mention one mistake we had made previously in Gabe's potty training.  My sister had mentioned that when potty training Gabe's cousin Mason, Mason had developed an impish tendency to pee on things on purpose, complete with a grin.  They trained him out of this by putting Mason in a cold shower whenever he pulled that stunt.  It worked, and it worked quickly.

There were times during Gabe's potty training when he refused to use the potty, and within five minutes had peed his pants.  So we tried the cold shower.  I think we did that twice, or maybe three times, before Gabe developed a complete terror of getting "the cold shower".  He had a couple of accidents that resulted in him proactively begging me not to be put in a cold shower.  And it was in the same awful, pleading voice that I could imagine an abused child begging a parent not to hit again.  It made me think, "oh god, what have I done?!"  I promised Gabe there would be no more cold showers, and I apologized to him profusely.

This was on my mind as our anger levels at Gabe's accidents spiked, and spiked hard.  For days, it was all I could do to tell Gabe to get himself to the bathroom and stripped without screaming.  But then I caught my breath, and took a closer look at the situation.

Gabe was using the potty for pooping.  Gabe was denying that he had to pee, and he was delaying potty visits for as long as possible.  After a few days of angry reactions from us grown-ups, he was no longer even telling us when he had peed, opting instead to continue playing or sitting on the couch in wet clothes.  Obviously, our yelling was making the problem worse.

What had caused this?  When he had diarrhea, Gabe would go for as long as 12 hours without needing to pee.  When I finally would coax him into sitting on the potty to try to pee, this sometimes triggered his diarrhea cramps to start.  Bad ones, too - he would be in tears.  Almost invariably, cramps or no cramps, his diarrhea would then lead to a bout of "beans".  Effectively, my son had been punished for going to the bathroom with pain and vomiting!  No wonder he didn't want to use the toilet.  I regret that it took me to weeks to put the puzzle pieces together.

As soon as I saw the big picture, I realized I needed to remove the anger and offer some positive incentive for Gabe to use the toilet.  Easy!  "Gabe, when you go pee in the potty, you can have a cookie."  No pressure, he could use the potty when he wanted to.  I stocked up on some really small cookies, and Gabe caught right on.

Well, there was one negative pressure that I continued to apply.  I told Gabe that if he peed himself while watching television, the TV would go off.  This was because there was a sub-plot of Gabe becoming so riveted by cartoons that he wouldn't leave to do anything.  This included massive, evening-wrecking tantrums when it came time for dinner.

We've had, what, four days now without an accident?  Thank the FSM!  There were a few days where Gabe demanded cookies inappropriately, or had accidents despite the cookies.  But now we have moved on to new territory: Gabe will make an impromptu potty trip not because he has to pee, but because he wants his sugary fix.  But we know can work away fro that gradually.  We have used treats as incentive for good behavior before; just like when training a puppy, you start using praise in place of the treat more and more often, until the behavior is automatic.

I'm so glad to have my happy child back to the way that he was.  He was stressed during those post-illness weeks, and nothing breaks my heart like a child suffering from stress.  I was stressed, and how is a stressed and angry parent supposed to help a stressed child?  I had to fix my attitude in order to fix Gabe's derailed toilet habits.

We do still have to work on the television habits, however.  Cartoons have become all-consuming to the little guy.  He asks to watch "movies" first thing in the morning, and at every conceivable opportunity.  I try to keep his screen time minimized, but when I'm home alone with him and I have to get Kaylee down for a nap, crap, the television sure helps.  Then it's a battle to get the idiot box turned off again, and when Chris comes home Gabe goes to him begging for more. . .

There's always something to teach them, isn't there?  Anyway, stay tuned for part three, in which I document the ups and downs of Kaylee's infant potty training.  Cheers!

Pee Pride

In the afternoon today I let Gabe wear a pair of his precious Thomas the Train underwear. As usual, there was a soggy ending to the story. Bedtime rolled around. Gabe was standing on his stepping stool washing his hands in the kitchen, when I told him it was time to go to the potty and pee. But the power of suggestion was too strong: Gabe wet himself right there on the stool. He apologetically announced, "I'm peeing."

But fantastic progress had already been made. After an hour of wearing the undies, I realized it was high time for Gabe to have a pee break. But Kaylee was starting her fussy-wiggles, so I had to high-tail it to the nursery for a visit to her potty box. It turned out she was more interested in nursing than in immediately peeing, so I was stuck there in the rocking chair while Gabe wandered freely, a pee-bomb waiting to happen.

"Gabe," I said, "it's time to use the potty. Come take off your shorts."

Well, heck, he listened to me. I heard him fumbling in the bathroom, and then into the nursery he stumbles, beaming, to demonstrate that he has his undies own around his ankles. "Okay," I said, "now go sit on the potty."

More bathroom fumbling ensues. There are suspicious thumps. "I'm all wet," he says. But not with pee. It turns out he has attempted to sit on the grown-up potty, has somehow dipped the back of his shirt in it. How, exactly, he managed to extract himself from the toilet is anybody's guess. I stripped him of his wet shirt, while still juggling a nursing baby whose bare butt is jammed into a tupperware box. "Try the little potty," I said.

Voila! "I did it!" Gabe proclaimed. And voila! Kaylee peed too. Only I was so distracted by Gabe's antics that the potty box isn't positioned correctly, and I got baptized.

Gabe got himself back into his undies and shorts with only minimal assistance, and had I been a little sooner with my reminder, he might have made it dry to bedtime as well. But as if he didn't want to leave the day on a soggy note, he surprised me again. Kaylee needed one last visit to the potty box during the bedtime rituals. Gabe was happily diapered, but he took one look at Kaylee's bare bum, and asked if he could go pee on the potty, too, and gets himself naked and on the potty and did his business in a flash.

And this time, I caught Kaylee's pee in the box.

Kaylee

Of course, I'm way behind on documenting where the kid are at. Gabe is forging ahead boldly into preschool territory, amazing me every day with his profound little steps into personhood. But this post is about Kaylee. At two and a half months, she feels like she has been in my life forever, and yet also seems to be rocketing through the infant stages so fast that I fear I will blink and miss them.

Today she laughed for the first time. Kaylee had just endured Gabe's end-of-day meltdown, in which he first screamed that he didn't want to be in the shower, and then screamed that he didn't want the shower to end. Chris applied some zen and calmed him down; Kaylee looked on with a giant grin, and then said "tee-hee!"

Kaylee just beams at us now, great big toothless, lovely grins. As with Gabe, the ceiling fans have been her first crush. She wakes up at dawn beneath our bedroom fan and proceeds to have an hour-long wiggle-flirt session with the whirling blades.

I had been taking Kaylee directly to bed with me at night around 8, when she was ready for sleep. But of course this prevented me from having any grown-up time with Chris, so I switched to putting her in the crib for the first part of the night. She surprised me by being entirely okay with this arrangement, so much so that on many nights she accepted my good night kiss and went to sleep without any fuss whatsoever. But then she went and slept through the night! I woke up at 4 A.M. that first night with this terrible feeling of not being ready yet, and broke all the rules by waking her up so that she could come back to bed with me.

Okay, so that was silly of me, and I haven't done it since.

What else? Well, I've started experimenting with a variation on the ancient and universal human method of dealing with baby elimination; i.e. "pottying" the baby instead of wasting resources in the form of a diaper. I am officially committed to doing nothing; I am not aiming to have a diaper-free infant or a halved diaper bill or anything as grand. For me, that would be a recipe for failure. I am merely asking, "can I get her to pee in a box once or twice today, to keep one more diaper out of the landfill?" The answer, so far, is hell yes! I will have to write more about this in another post, assuming that the experiment continues to go so well.

Bath time!

Don't let that concerned look fool you; Kaylee loved her first bath. Bathing her is so much fun!

I think with Gabe we were too paranoid about cooking the baby. He hated baths because he was cold.

More Photos from Kaylee's Birthday

Welcome to the family, Kaylee Nancy Clay! She joined us on Thursday, March 31, 2011. I guess she was unwilling to wait for April Fool's day, or my sister's birthday on April 5 (I tried to keep her in, Marta!), or even her due date, the 9th.

Seven pounds, eleven ounces of genuine baby!

There, cleaned (but still needing her hair washed) and tagged.

This photo makes her look like she lost a fight on the way out! But we couldn't have hoped for a healthier baby. She is a perfect, perky little thing.



I was having a little trouble getting Kaylee to latch on that first day, so we had some naked snuggle time. Sure enough, when she was ready to nurse, her signals were unmistakable. Nursing has been a piece of cake ever since.



Here she is on Saturday, dressed for the ride home.

WIP : Sibling

It is official. Gabe's sibling is in the works and currently three months along!

Gabe Eat's Edamame from the Garden

I picked some of the soy beans just before lunch and decided to try making edamame for lunch. I figured Michelle and I would split some. Much to my surprise Gabe go into his chair and dove in.

It took him a couple attempts before he figured out how to get them open, but he learned quickly.

Nom Nom Nom goes Gabe.

Earlier this morning Gabe shelled a bunch of dried peas for me, so I'm wondering if that helped him out with the edamame. Though eventually he copied mom and dad and started popping the pods in his mouth to break them open.

Happy boy full of fresh organic edamame. If I ever doubted if all the time in the garden was worth it, watching Gabe happily eat GREEN things from the garden has dispelled that doubt.

A birthday toy

Gabe picked out his gift at the toystore.



He likes it almost as much as the balloons.



Thank you everyone for the fleet of toy construction vehicles, and the other lovely gifts! Gabe loves them all.

Gabe's Waterpark Adventure

You want me to climb up where?

I did it all by myself! I am totally the man!

Now I just adjust like so and get down on my butt...

Holy crap do you see how high this is?!?!?!

My public awaits so down I go.

Splashdown!

Here ya go little lady let me get that for you.

Now that we have that out of the way,
what would you say to a trip to the water slide together?

Ya I totally come here all the time. I practically own this place.

Free-stylin!

Holy Cow. I hope she can't see my face from up there this is scary!

What are you doin' man. You're like totally backwards.

Wedgy city huh dude? I told you backwards was a bad idea.

All the babes love free-stylin!

Happy Earth Day!

Pee Pee in the Potty

We've been acclimating Gabe to his potty by letting him sit on it prior to getting into the tub or shower and tonight he finally went pee pee in it. We're not pressuring him or anything, it was more a happy accident, but we're hoping that gentle positive reinforcement will click in over time.

Recent Videos of Gabe's Activities

Gabe's been learning new stuff all the time.

Important stuff like how to climb ladders

How to play the cymbals

How to ask for more water when he's thirsty

How to order up diaper time comic relief

How to answer the phone and hang up

Fun with Words

Gabe's vocabulary is continuing to expand! He's doing a good job of trying words and using signs at the same time where applicable. Still many are pretty mangled, though adorable.

Hi Lao Loo - "I love you"
Nae Nae - "Night Night"
Dow - "Down"
Oh No!
Woah!
Hi
Hello
Bye
Buh Bye
Mo Ma - "More" He uses this while using the sign for more
Doa - "Door"
Dat - "That"
Emma (Name of friend at daycare)
Hurray - Said while raising arms up
Hah tch - "Hot" Said while reaching towards something and then pulling hand away

New Signs:
Thirsty - Running finger down throat
Itsy Bitsy Spider - He puts his hands together at face level and raises them up while singing "aye ya aye ye"

Gabe's First Word

While Gabe has been babbling for a while and saying mama and dada, they are mostly mantras. Dadadadada, mamamama. This morning Gabe said "Up" very clearly and distinctly several times when Michelle asked him if he wanted up. I can't wait to see what will come next!

Oh look, today is the 27th. . .

. . .which makes Gabe 15 months old. He is now officially a toddler!

First Steps

We ate out at a local family friendly restaurant called Ricks this evening. When we arrived home we were playing with Gabe when we stared playing the stand up on daddy's knees and fall to daddy game. He laughs like crazy when we play it and usually ends up falling in a random direction, sometimes backwards. One time I scooted backwards on my butt to get some distance and he step-fell towards me. After repeating it a few times he actually took several steps forward towards me and never really lost his balance.

Michelle and I were beaming and laughing in excitement and Gabe was too. Before it was all said and done he walked about two meters to me without falling and I was ecstatic that he was finally reaching this long awaited milestone. I know running around is just a short time away and I both can't wait to run around with him and dread chasing him;)

Hamsicles

We've offered Gabe ham plenty of times, and up until now he's rejected it. Tonight he ate all the ham chunks in his mac & cheese. The thing is I was cooking the mac & cheese and had a bowl of frozen ham by the stove waiting to be dumped in. Gabe saw the frozen ham and asked for some. I gave him a small chunk on a lark, and he sucked on it for a while. Chewed. Then swallowed and asked for more. He ate a half dozen more frozen chunks before dinner.

If you had told me that this would the way we'd get Gabe to start eating his ham I would have called you crazy. Sometimes ideas are just crazy enough to work.

So That's Why He's Been Fussy

Poor Gabe! He is currently at home with an ear infection. We paid a visit to the doctor yesterday after three days of intermittent low fevers, and it was a good thing, because his temperature spiked right after the visit, and tried to stay up all through the night.

Wonderful Chris is on sick baby duty today, and last I heard he was trying to wrangle Gabe down for a nap.

Gabe is one tough cookie. Even when his temperature hit 102.9, he was still smiling and scurrying around in laps. I had to wake him up during the night to give him Tylenol. Aside from wanting comfort foods, he’s trying his hardest to pretend that he isn’t sick.

Oh yes – Gabe took his first steps over the weekend! He stood up next to the toilet, held his arms up to me to indicate that he wanted to be picked up, and then did a two-step shuffle. After that, he decided to sit down.

There hasn’t been a repeat performance for Chris yet, but I’m sure it’s because Gabe just isn’t feeling up to it.

Happy Birthday Gabe

Gabe has made it through his first year of life with flying colors! I can't believe it really has been a year already.

Schweet, they gave me stuff with frosting on it.

What, What? You have place something strange in my frosting!

Why the heck are you setting the thingy on fire, are you sure this is safe?

Pretty fire.

Baby burn protection service interrupts this grab to bring you smoke.

Well since it is no longer burning I guess I'll try and eat it.

Well they took it away so back to the cake.

Here daddy! Stop taking pictures and try this stuff its great!

First Swim

During Chris' family's visit, we took our little fish for his first swim. Gabe really wasn't sure about all that water, but he was a good sport, and a good time was had by all.