While I had steeled myself for the long potty training process, similar to my first foray into the endeavor two years ago, I have been pleasantly surprised. A few days ago, I took the bold step and unrolled all of the rugs back into their respectful places around the house.
Lily has only had a handful of accidents in the last three weeks. She still wears a diaper at night, but otherwise she is rocking the undies. In fact, within the last few days she has dismissed the potty chair all together, insisting on using the seat on the big potty. Then started shunning the seat, wanting to do it “like Ella”. Yesterday, she refused to even use the step stool, insisting she could hoist herself up, which she could! She’s brought back the step stool. She’s comfortable going in public restrooms and we’ve even been testing our luck and taking her out to run errands, go out to eat and to visit others in her underwear and not a pull-up. And when she does wear a pull-up, she stays dry. Lily doesn’t even care about receiving M&Ms any longer. Ella does, so she will sometimes point out that Lily went so they can both have a “Nem” but Lily’s indifferent.
Even better, I put the Diaper Champ into retirement. Perhaps it will get use in the future, but for now, I relish not having to flip its handle every few hours or change the bag on garbage night (torture!).
As if independent toileting wasn’t enough in the wide world of growing up, we’ve also stopped putting Lily down for naps mid-day. It’s less tortuous than I was expecting. Lately, she’s been staying awake until 10:30 pm, easily. Every. Single. Night. It was getting old. She would push her crib away from the wall and manage to scoot it around the room and sometimes cause a little trouble. One night, Loran and I were laying in bed listening to the girls play shoe store. Lily had scooted her crib over to the dresser so she could retrieve the four boxes of new school shoes, then she set up shop. Ella scurried over to the playroom to get some “money” and Lily would sell the shoes out of her mobile store. We were laughing listening to Lily demand “Fitty dollas” – she sounded like a bad Asian stereotype. But, as the hour approached 11 pm, we had to shut down the black market crib shoe sales. Now Lillian enjoys a movie during quiet time with Ella and we haven’t had too much trouble with her behavior or moods. Of course, as I type this, they’re way too busy playing to watch their movie and relax. But, the silver lining to no downtime during the day is that they both go to bed earlier. 8:30 pm is much nicer than 10:30 pm and we’ll work that earlier as school starts. Of course, once school starts, Lily may need a little refresher nap, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.
Of course, we haven’t arrived at this point of diaper freedom without some drama. One morning, I went into the girls’ room to wake Lily. Ella had been awake awhile, but it was time to rouse the night owl because we were going to meet friends at the zoo and couldn’t wait for her to wake on her own. I walk into the room and see Lily laying in a little ball, completely naked. This worried me. I was already running a little behind. The idea of stripping an entire bed before leaving for the zoo seemed a little overwhelming. But of course, I had to go grab my camera and stifle giggles as I took a photo of Lil. The thought also crossed my mind that she’s just so puny, I was expecting Sally Struthers to walk in and do a commercial for Christian Children’s Fund…for only $.70 a day, you can supply Lillian with enough butter to gain body fat. (Editor’s note: feed actual starving children through my favorite charity – Feed My Starving Children) So, after playing paparazzi, I assessed the situation. The bed was dry. But, where were the pajamas and the diaper she’d been put to bed with? Where?? Turns out, Lillian is using her off the charts height to start securing her basketball scholarship. She balled up her little pjs and launched them into the hamper. Even more impressive, she removed her wet diaper and accurately got it into the diaper pail opening. Thankfully, this hasn’t been a daily occurrence, but it was mildly amusing at the time.
However, the largest contributor to the drama was me. I win the award, but also spurred Lily to turn the corner in her learning…so I guess it was good?! One early afternoon, right before nap time (back when Lily still napped) I was urging Lily to use the bathroom. She hadn’t gone all morning, I knew she had to go and was just using her newly mastered skill of holding it. She even brought me the diaper I was going to put on her for nap time, insisting that I put it on her. Well, I’m no dummy. I knew she had to go and she was holding it and waiting for the diaper, she figured she’d do me a favor and bring me the diaper to expedite the process, but I was on to her. I refused and told her to go sit on the potty. Then, it happened. Lily’s eyes got huge and my foot got wet. She started to whimper and I grabbed her to make a break for the bathroom, halfway through the kitchen, I realized what I was doing – spreading the mess through the house, so I just put her down a few feet from where she’d started and she finished going. She was mortified and I was mad. I’ll admit, I did not handle the situation with a lot of grace. Ella went and hid. Ella’s also a little dramatic, I wasn’t a complete monster. Lily and I got her cleaned up, she helped me get the floor cleaned up and she was sent off to nap. After nap, we joked about it and now if you ask Lily what happens if you pee on the floor, she responds, “Mom goes crazy” with a big smile. Perhaps we’ve averted therapy for that one. Since then, Lily hasn’t been holding it until she’s at “code red”. She’s even taking a break from playing inside or even outside with the neighbors to use the bathroom…so…yay?
Hopefully, this will be my last long entry involving my children’s potty habits. But let’s be realistic, I wouldn’t put money on it.
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