Firstly, some sad news - the baby rabbits all succumbed to some unknown baby rabbit illness and died the other night. The kids were totally unmoved by their passing - Soph gave one of them a swift poke with a stick and declared that they should go on the compost heap with the dead magpie, and that was that. Probably another litter on it's way anyway - apparently they can conceive immediately after birth. Mother Nature, you're a cruel mistress!
So today was Day Number One on Caleb's journey as an Undies Wearing Boy. Scary stuff. I wasn't particularly motivated, he being just 25 months and all that. We have been getting fairly regular poos and wees where they should go, and he obviously has a fair bit of control, but really, he just gets so focused on the business of playing that we end up with puddles on the floor quite often, and I'm not a fan of cleaning floors. Besides, he's just a baby!
I'm not such a fan of cleaning nappies either though, which is one reason I decided to bite the bullet. Every few days, I manage to unwittingly poison the poor wee monkey with gluten or too much dairy, and those stinky, smeary nastinesses would be enough to drive even the most fervent believer in child-led toilet-training to kick the nappy bucket into touch and get them using the porcelain.
Yesterday we introduced a reward chart, whereby he earned a stamp for every successful trip to the toilet. He ignored it for the first part of the day, then something clicked, and he knocked out five separate wees in an hour. I use the term 'separate' loosely, as in reality, the little tike was dashing to the loo, releasing a miniscule dribble of urine, cutting off the flow, hopping off and repeating the exercise every 10 minutes until the chart was full. I think I may have been outsmarted by a two year old.
Today, he was in fine form until after lunch, when he dropped the ball and soiled a few pairs of undies. He ran around starkers for a few hours - I was REALLY worried about Minty the lamb and her sharp, nibbly teeth near his nether regions, but all parts seem to be in working order still, thankfully!
Some would say it's been a good first day. Certainly significantly more successes than failures, but it still seems like I'm doing a lot of the work. I'm reminding him to go, I'm taking him there when he gets distracted on the way (honestly, this child has the attention span of a goldfish, bless his heart!) I'm helping him take his pants off, and I'm helping him wash his hands. I used to get a bit eye-rolly at the middle aged and beyond mothers who would regale me with tales of their spawn being toilet trained before they hit 18 months etc, because really, it was THEM who were trained, dashing after their toddlers, watching for every grimace and grunt and generally making their lives stressful. The children involved seemed to do very little, except sit on the potty where they were unceremoniously plonked for hours at a time until they did something. But here I am, 'training' my child, whilst tearing my hair out and stressing over counting bowel movements and ensuring we have a plastic bag and at least 5 pairs of clean dry undies on hand wherever we go. And that Caleb is sitting on a plastic supermarket bag in his carseat so that he doesn't get the cover wet.
We had it so easy with Sophie. At 2 and a half, she started to show some control, and I told her that she was going to use the toilet from now on instead of nappies. She told me that actually, she was too busy playing with her Barbies to possibly remember to go to the toilet, which was exactly the wrong thing to say to a mother that just loves drawin' those ol' lines in the sand **tumbleweed rolls by**
The battle was on and Sophie lost. I think we had three accidents in total (and I do apologise to the lovely Hannah at preschool who was peed on during this process) but she was trained day and night in a matter of 2 days. Piece of cake. Helps that she has a bladder the size of Texas and only needs to go twice a day, despite downing litres of milk and water on any given day. Incidentally, the first time she sat on the potty and peed, she nearly overflowed it - if I wasn't so busy doing the 'My-Baby-Just-Peed-On-The-Potty' dance of rapture, I would have gagged, or at least choked laughing.
So the picture above, of my lovely nappies hanging on the line (with unmatching pegs **twitch** - I was running short after hanging my third load this particular day and was close to using paperclips or string to tie them on - beggars can't be choosers in such circumstances) may soon be a thing of the past. Or maybe I'll waver and bung him in his nappies because they're just so cute. And he is my baby, after all...
Here's a recent pic of Minty and Caleb sharing a tender moment.
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