Hello Kitty, Goodbye Diapers

We decided some time ago that we would not potty train the little miss. Like, ever. We quite simply did not want to fail as epically as we had with the little man. A year and a half of absolute hell had scarred us to the point of letting her wear diapers forever rather than start the nightmare all over again.

Even at fourteen months when she started using the toilet on a semi-regular basis, we resisted. I didn't even write about it here because if I ignored it then it wasn't real. It was too early, we didn't want to push it. She was pooping on the potty long before the little man, but we were too mired in the dark, bribery-riddled place of Legos for poops to actually admit it. The closest we came was moving her from diapers to Pull-Ups, to make her frequent potty trips more convenient.

She wouldn't even use the potty, preferring the actual toilet for her business. And despite our only taking her when she announced it, she was still averaging about a 75% success rate. People would ask if we were training her and we would either avoid the question or flatly say "No." We would just take her when she said she had to go. But potty training? Never.

Last week her preschool teacher asked if we wanted to start, as apparently any time they asked the kids who were potty training if they had to go she would squeal with glee and do anything she could to join them. Our little girl was basically begging for it, wanting desperately to be part of that toilet-using elite.

The time had come and we couldn't ignore it anymore. We agreed that we would start potty training the following Monday, but on Friday morning our little lady announced that she wanted to wear panties. So there you go.

Now the little man actually mastered peeing LONG before the other business got sorted out, so I had kind of forgotten those messy first few days. Four sets of wet pants later and I decided to brave a trip to Walmart. Crazy? You bet. But it was fine. We even bought her a few sets of Hello Kitty underpants to sweeten the pot, but I was confident in the power of the Dora the Explorer pair she was wearing. I mean, how could you pee on Dora?

It was only on a stop at the library on our way home that my cockiness caught up with me. Now, I'm not a complete idiot. I did have a change of her clothes with me. But being out of practice with the wet pants scenario, I did neglect to pack an extra pair of socks. Or a plastic bag to put the wet clothes in. Rookie move. Serious rookie move.

That was last week. And we're pretty much done. A few accidents here and there, but basically done. Thank you God, Hello Kitty or whatever power you choose to pray to. And you can hate me all you want, but I invite you to read ANY of my previous posts to know that this is truly some sort of divine intervention and someone up there is paying us back for the trauma we endured for almost two years.

We're still in diapers for bedtime, whereas the little man stayed dry through the night from early on. It really does go to show you that every kid is different and you just never know. I can't even bear to think how many trouser bombs we could have avoided if we had let the little man do things in his own time. We were first-time parents and eager to get started, and well...you know how that turned out. Maybe not even in his own time, as he could very well be in diapers til this day, but just a little longer.

Hindsight is 20/20. And I can "what if" and "if only" with the best of them, but for now I will just be happy to be done with potty training, once and for all.

Now if we could just find the magic answer for the little man's sleep issues.

It's always something.

The Good, The Bad, and The Depths of Hell

Wow, three months since my last post. It feels like a year since I had a moment or the brain power to actually sit here and start typing. We are in the midst of what I can honestly say is the hardest phase of parenthood we have been through to date. And I thought potty training was a difficult phase. I would trade a trouser bomb any day for the knowledge that we were heading into a good night's sleep.

A quick update for anyone that has followed our saga de poop: Potty training the little man is as complete as we are going to get until he learns to wipe his own butt and actually aim, but we'll take what we can get. We are now the proud owners of an EXTENSIVE Lego collection, but it was worth every brightly coloured block to find a reward system that actually worked.

That is the "good" part of this post. The "bad" and the "depths of hell" are all kind of rolled into one with the update to come.

Right around the beginning of December, the little man started to get anxious about bedtime. It escalated pretty quickly, mixed together with some nightmares about horses and some very tired parents.

Since we went through sleep training three years ago, he's been a champion. He has gone to bed with no issues, slept through the night except for the occasional night terror, and although he's always been an early riser, it's been fine. Now all of a sudden he won't go to sleep if we're not in the room, and he wakes constantly throughout the night and freaks out if we're not there, or runs into our room screaming. He then won't go to sleep again unless we're with him. Every single night.

It started out as fear, then anxiety, and lately it's become a power struggle, pure and simple. The fear is gone because we actually talked to the imaginary horses, gave them names, and asked them to leave. We're still working through the anxiety, but at some point the getting up and screaming became more habit than anything else.

It's killing us.

Well, to be more accurate, it's killing me. Mr. Awesome has absolutely proven his moniker throughout this time, and especially this past week. I was literally falling apart. I do not do well with little, or frequently interrupted sleep. I was a basket case most of the time, flipping between sobbing and a numbness that felt like the precipice of depression.

On Monday of last week we went to our doctor and he told us to back to sleep training. We didn't really know that you could do that with a four and a half year old, but after some exhaustive (pun intended) searches online and a re-read of our original sleep training book, we decided to give it a go.

Because I was past the point of coping, Mr. Awesome gave me earplugs and told me to go to bed, saying he would take the first night. This had more meaning to me than any bouquet of flowers - that was pure LOVE, baby. And he took the next few nights too, working through the repetition of going in at regular intervals and letting the little man know everything was okay and that it was time to be asleep.

It is not easy. Last time it took three nights and we were done. A four and a half year old is a lot different than an 18 month old. (Duh.) The last time we went through this he was in a CRIB, for Pete's sake. He's constantly getting out of bed, turning on his light, saying he needs to go to the bathroom, anything and everything to avoid going to bed without us in the room.

Last night was night #5 and we're still not seeing a very bright light at the end of the tunnel. Mr. Awesome went camping last night with friends so it was all me. I was dreading it. It wasn't great and I did leave the TV on all night so the little man would think I was on the couch, but it was definitely better. Marginally.

Mr. Awesome will hate the electricity bills, but that just might be the price of a rested child and wife. You find what works best for your family and roll with it, right?