Blogging time!

First, story time… then picture time.

I decided that I’d rather attempt potty training before i had a newborn to care for at the same time. So, a friend lent me “Toilet Training in Less than a Day.” She said it was a great book, but strangely enough, doesn’t use it herself. Why did I trust her, you might ask? Well, her mother used it and my friend has no trouble making it to the bathroom. Good job Hollie! In fact, now that she’s pregnant herself, she is in the bathroom an awful lot.

So I decided to use this method that Hollie’s mom used on both her and on Hollie’s kids too… although neither Anna or I are patient enough to do it as methodically as the book describes. However, with a dollie wearing undies, a stack full of snacks and lots of fluids to encourage practice time, we took off the diaper on Thursday morning. I showed Anna how the dolly had dry undies. “Yay dolly!” Then we showed the dolly on the potty and pretended it went pee. “Yay dolly!” Then I secretly got the dolly’s undies wet. “Oh no, dolly!” Anna seemed to get the general idea.

Anna did not pee for FOREVER. I was ready to work with her here but she wasn’t obliging! I had her sit on the potty for a couple minutes at a time two or three times, but she hated that. Was not interested in pointless sitting. Making her hate the potty was not part of the plan. FINALLY, she had to go. In the living room. All over. Anna started crying with some hysteria. “Yucky! Bad! Waaaaahh!!!” Wow, I guess she really got it. We practiced running to the potty three times before she was tired of running to the potty and crying worse. Then we changed into nice dry undies. “Yay!” This happened three times over the course of the morning with no improvement. I was a bit discouraged.

The fourth time, she stopped before she was finished peeing. “Yay Anna!” We ran to the potty and sat her down on it. And then we waited. Anna continued to cry and get hysterical every time she felt the urge to pee. How was I supposed to tell her it was ok? I did tell her. In many ways. I talked about pee nonstop for over half an hour. I told her how happy pee made me, Papa, Grandma, Razzie, Elmo and the President of the United States. That seemed to help a little. Not much. When she had to go so bad she was squirming, I kept getting thoughts of how it looked lke she was in labor, she was so uncomfortable! Poor child! Poor mommy! Please just let it out Anna!!!

Anna finally peed in the potty. She stood up. She looked. She puffed out her chest and said, “Anna peed in potty!” “YAYYYYYYYYY!!!!!” So now we repeated this with slightly less crying every time until she understood that the potty was a safe place to release. I went to bed EXHAUSTED. She naps in plastic pants or a pull up and the same for bedtime. She is sometimes dry after naptime, which is great… she might get the nap figured out soon, but we’ll see. Friday and Saturday she hardly had an accident. Quite a few damp undies, but not many wet ones. She even started to pee as soon as she sat down instead of waiting until she lost the urge. She even peed on the Baskin Robbins potty! (After wetting her pants halfway while at the park and refusing the porta-potty)

Anyway, so things are going good. We only had one or two successful times while at church and her birthday party today, but that was her first time spending more than an hour away from home. I think she did great. One of them was even in her potty on the side of the road next to the car! So she’s understanding. Makes a mommy happy. After three days of holding it, she finally pooped too. Thanks for the prune juice Grandma D!

Ok, enough about bodily functions. I’m sure those of you who have it mastered already find the successes of those at the beginning of their bodily function journey to be boring. But I assure you, after all this fuss (and all those diapers!) it is VERY interesting to me.

Anna snuggling with a tired mommy:

I’m a little bigger at 16 weeks than I was last time:

(last time:)

I don’t have a picture of Anna in her beautiful Easter dress because it was too cold to wear it while we did a fast Easter egg hunt…!

So cute – Anna fell asleep with Pappy on Easter before dinner:

Ok, so day two of potty training. Anna is taking a long time to go. She is whining. I snuggle up next to her (I did a lot of that because she had been so distressed the first day). She isnt distressed this time though. She is whining because she is tired. She remedies the situation and I make super mommy efforts to capture the moment on camera:

She’s cute even when she’s sitting on the pot!:

Birthday party time! My little girl is TWO! Melissa turned 22! Here she is examining Grammy’s garden:

Precious girl smelling a flower while holding onto her present of a ducky sprinkler:

“What are you doing to my duck Grammy?”

Not surprisingly, she gets upset when her clothes get “wet” these days… so here’s my little white child!:

“Can I have a bite of the Melissa?”

We thought it would be cute if Anna blew out candles with Aunt Melissa. Here you can clearly see the look of, “You want me to do What???” on her face:

We enlisted a little help:

Well, I THOUGHT I was getting big:

Playing silly with Papa:

Hunting Easter eggs:

Playing in her sprinkler on her birthday!: