Potty Talk

After two consecutive three day work weeks (and the 3rd day of each was cut short by two hours thanks to my employer) we are back to our regularly scheduled programming. *sigh*

I expected tears this morning when we dropped Monkey off but he was fine.  We left him happily playing at the sand table with his friends.  He did try to pull the “potty” card on us at one point to stall but it was half-hearted at best, lol. 

Now I need to try to get back into the daily grind!  I’d much rather be home watching The Lion King for the 4,743rd time but I suppose…

Every year we put together tins of goodies for friends and family and today is the big day.  We’ve got two pans of fudge cooling so we’ll take a break to have lunch and then take Monkey out in the snow to burn off some of the sugar he has consumed today.  This afternoon we’ll start on the cookies.

On another note, it is still snowing, which is quite exciting.  It reminds me of Christmases years ago when we always had snow on the ground.

Oh, and…Monkey pooped on the potty today. ALL BY HIMSELF!  He was wearing boxers and asked for a diaper.  I told him he was wearing boxers today so if he needed to pee he had to go in the potty.  He asked for a diaper again so I added that if he had to poop he needed to go on the potty as well.  Well.  He dropped his boxers on the kitchen floor, walked to the bathroom and put his stool by the toilet.  He likes to rest his feet on it while he’s sitting on the toilet and he pees standing up so I knew this was a big deal.  I grabbed his potty seat and a book and left the room as instructed.  He jumped off the potty and took off for his bookshelf.  I’d given him the wrong book!  As soon as he located the one he wanted he ran back to the potty and sat until he was ALL DONE!  This is HUGE!  Yay potty training!

Errr, forgot to hit “Publish” lol, two batches of cookie dough are now finished as well.  I should probably do at least two more before bed.

We bought Elmo’s Potty Time last spring, hoping it might interest Monkey and jump start our potty training efforts.  It would not be an understatement to say that Monkey hated this DVD.  He wouldn’t even watch it long enough to see Elmo, as soon as he heard Elmo’s voice he would shut the DVD off and/or run from the room yelling “No! No! No!”

Over the last week Monkey started to soften toward the DVD and now he’s full out obsessed with it.  I hear “Emmo!” constantly.  I am more than willing to turn it on upon request so he has seen this DVD about 6,000 times this weekend.

Then on Sunday night, Monkey stripped off his diaper again (in full view this time) and, after throwing it in the garbage, disappeared into his bedroom.  He returned a few minutes later carrying a pair of the long ignored “Cars” underwear I had bought months ago.  He then stood and got them 1/2 way on before he asked for help.  What the heck has gotten into this kid?

We’ll take it but sometimes he makes my head spin!

We have p**p in the potty.  I am SO excited!  I should probably be embarassed by how excited this makes me, actually.

The school seems to have created a potty monster but I’m not going to worry about that.  They are using PECs and Monkey has learned that if he grabs the “bathroom” picture and signs “potty” he gets to leave the room and go to the bathroom.  It’s the perfect escape and he has quickly trained them.  He’s totally taking advantage of it and they’re realizing that they’ve created a monster. 

This morning he didn’t want to go to class, he was not very well regulated at all for some reason.  As soon as he “checked in” to class he grabbed the bathroom picture and was granted a field trip, lol.  His lead teacher looked a bit put out, she knows what is going on but…that’s their problem!

Jennifer mentioned in a comment that she told her son Kyle that he was not going to wear pullups at night anymore and he responded by staying dry after that.  I tried a bit of this last weekend with Monkey.  I put boxers on him and told him he needed to tell us if he needed to go p**p and he could either go on the potty or go in a diaper.  He chose a diaper.  I was pleasently surprised and hoping it would continue.

Color me gobsmacked because it *has*.  Duhdee has not been putting boxers on Monkey, he’s still wearing diapers during the day, but he is consistently telling us when he needs a new diaper.  Two nights ago he went p**p in the diaper and as soon as he was done he went to the toilet, took off the diaper and I helped him flush the contents.  This is HUGE people!  Maybe we can get this kid PT’d afterall!

I know Monkey understands way more of what we say than he can communicate, I’m not sure why it takes me by surprise every time he demonstrates it though.

Monkey has hit a bit of a plateau on potty training for a while now.  We had him on a schedule and he was fairly well catch trained at one point but then he began resisting our efforts to go on the potty and we backed off a bit.  In his new classroom at school he has been resistant to using the potty as well.  So we wait.

We’re finally getting signs that he may be progressing in the BM area, he is coming to us and telling us that he’s had a BM and demands a new “‘per!”  It’s (a very small) something but we’re back to hoping we may someday actually succeed here.

I’ve always heard that the feel and learn style pullups are a waste (expensive and not very useful for training ultimately.)  Has anyone switched from diapers to these pull ups and then had potty training success?

For the last two or three weeks (time gets away from me these days) we’ve been actively potty training and we’re having some success, I’m happy to report.  Monkey was NOT a fan of potty training at the beginning, every time we asked him to use the potty he’d sign “all done” and run off saying no, no, no.  We finally discovered that Monkey is much more willing to use the potty if we allow him to stand up at the toilet and we don’t try to make him sit down on either his potty chair or the toilet with a Monkey-sized seat insert.

We also discovered that Monkey covets Duhdee’s boxers.  After each trip to the potty he began running to our bedroom and stealing a pair of Duhdee’s boxers from the drawer.  He would concentrate very hard on getting those boxers pulled up to his armpits.  He could have spent a little more time making sure the boxers were right side up first but I suppose he just hadn’t gotten to that bit yet.  It really was quite cute.  We tried to convince him that the tighty-whiteys with SpongeBob and Lightening McQueen were just as cool but he was having none of that.  Last weekend at Old Navy we found Monkey sized boxers and the child is in heaven now.

So he’s now willing to stand at the potty, he’s willing to wear something other than a “‘per!” on his bum, and he is able to stay dry for a few hours at a time.  He’s still not telling us that he needs to go, we have to catch him.  We sometimes get a clue (he’ll cross his legs or grab himself …nice, I know) and we can get him to the toilet but just as often we miss the clue or there is no clue and we end up with a wet ‘per or wet boxers.

We’ve had a couple accidents (I will be over the moon the first time he goes poop on the potty and I manage to NOT get it on myself in some manner) and we’re not always the neatest (really, the worst was a public bathroom and honestly, how likely is it that he was the FIRST person to pee on the floor that day anyway?) but we’re making progress and we’re all pretty happy about it.

One day we will no longer have random, used (but dry!) ‘pers lying around the house like forgotten toys.  We will no longer be at the beck and call of a kitchen timer.  AND hopefully, one day, I will be permitted to not throw my arms over my head and scream and jump around like a fool over every drop that lands in the toilet.  In the meantime, though, it’s not so bad…in fact, it’s kind of fun!

Our first stop on this fine* Monday morning was an evaluation with the potty training specialists at Children’s Hospital. 

Monkey has a huge fan club at Children’s Hospital, apparently.  The NP that we met with today had already heard about how AWESOME he is from the receptionist, lol.  It’s really nice to feel so wanted.  We were greeted with “It’s my FAVORITE family!” as Monkey stopped at the reception desk to help himself to some Purelle.  

The other really cool thing about the NP?  She had READ his charts…all the notes from every visit we’ve had, including the ER trip two weeks ago.  I can’t even tell you how nice it felt to walk in and not be starting from scratch.  I know you folks understand 🙂

She gave us some great tips, wrote a nice letter to the school so we can get them onboard with our plan and advised us to give him Benefiber once a day to try to control the consistency of his movements, that’s the first challenge we need to face.  She also mentioned that typically its the bowel movements that are easiest to train for, which really, fine by me.  I don’t mind a wet diaper, I can handle those as long as needed but the other, yeah, I’d like to be done there.  We go back in 8-10 weeks for a re-evaluation and in the meantime we get to chart.  We love to chart around here…any excuse to use Excel!

*It is most definitely NOT a fine day!  It’s cold and rainy and after a week of sun and temperatures in the 70’s and 80’s it’s NOT FUNNY.  Wah!  I want summer!