Potty Training Odyssey

So now that we seems to be through the worst of the potty training, Mammy has realised there's a pattern to these things. You have the first few days where it doesn't seem to be going to badly but this is because you are holding it or she is watching you like a hawk or you are sitting on the potty continuously.

Then you hit a very wet patch. The potty is irrelevant. You go there happily to chat with your friends at creche or watch tv at home. But you don't actually use it if you can help it at all. You have about 6 accidents a day. Some days you seem to be making a bit of progress because you have less accidents but that's because you took advantage of your nappy at nap time or sheer luck that you happen to be on the potty at the time.

Then one day, usually the day after your mammy has decided that you are too young / not ready for this, that she never should have started this lark and that she will give you till the weekend and then the nappy is going back on for at least another 6 weeks, you get it. For me it happened on Wednesday, 12 days after we started. When Mammy arrived into creche, I had a red star sticker on my t-shirt. Ok so I had one accident in the morning but I got it right twice in the afternoon. And on Thursday and Friday I will still wearing the clothes I'd gone in wearing and I hadn't bothered wetting my nappy at nap time. I'd waited till afterwards and gone on the potty instead. I even took Mammy to the toddler toilet to show her I could use that and squeezed out an extra drop for her. (And to get to flush the toilet again).

When we went out today to buy sandals I wore a pull up because sometimes when you're not at home or at creche, the toilet is a long way away. But while we were out Mammy brought me to the big girls toilet and I sat up for her and managed to use it. So there's no going back now. I'm well on my way to leaving those nappies behind.

Los 3 Amigos

2 out of 3 looking
Originally uploaded by Ella's Ma.

It was Emma's birthday on Saturday so all the Rickards came to stay. Not that staying with us was her birthday treat but it meant that we could mind Clare in our house while Emma and Jamie had a night out. Clare is pretty easy to mind. She's interested in all our toys. She can sit up now and she can stretch pretty far to get to the toy she wants - even if that is the toy I'm playing with. I tried to tell her that etch a sketch isn't for 7 month olds. It's ok though. We have kept one box of our baby toys on the toy shelves so we can all play with those when she's there.

Clare ate her dinner before Emma and Jamie left. She eats loads - for a little person. It's just as well we didn't put my high chair in the attic when I was finished using it because it's handy for Clare and she was able to watch us all eat our dinner too. Then we introduced her to some Super Why. I don't think she had seen it before. I had to sit on my potty for that bit so I let Ella mind Clare. She doesn't know the songs, catchphrases and letters yet to join in but we'll teach her.

She was very good for Mammy and went to sleep before our bedtime. She must have been up a little bit early because Emma and Clare were already in the sitting room when I came down to use my potty the next morning. Despite having 3 pottys in the house, I only like to use the ducky one and Mammy doesn't like me to be upstairs once she has taken my nappy off in the morning so we've been getting up quite early at weekends now.

We actually had a sunny day yesterday. So Daddy took the sun chairs out of the shed. They were looking a bit worse for wear so Ella helped him to sand them while I was busy having my nap. When I woke up it was time to go for a drive in the car. We got ice lollies like the ones we had in Jill and Mark's house. And we went to see a waterfall. Only before we got near the waterfall, we had to spend a lot of time in the playground where there are all sorts of things to climb on. I stuck mostly to the swings and the roundabout and the sand.

Ella was able to go climbing on much bigger climbing frames but every time I tried to climb up onto a platform, Mammy lifted me down before I got to the top and was out of her reach. We had our bikes with us so we were able to cycle to the waterfall and then on the way back we stopped at an even bigger rope climbing frame. Ella climbed quite high, Daddy went all the way to the top, I stayed near the bottom and Mammy didn't seem interested in climbing at all.

May Day May Day

lazy sundays
Originally uploaded by Ella's Ma.

We were meant to have visitors last weekend. All last week I kept saying “we’re going to Crumps” – even though we weren’t. They were coming to us. We left crèche early on Friday and went for a big shop in the supermarket for loads and loads of food. But there was a problem on Friday – Conor was sick so they couldn’t come. Then we thought they were going to come on Saturday but Conor was even sicker and had to go to hospital. It turns out he has something called migraine which doesn’t sound very nice at all even though his Mammy and everyone else seemed happy that it wasn’t anything else.

So as we had no plans to go anywhere, we launched “Project Potty Training”. After my nap on Saturday, Mammy took off my nappy and didn’t put it back on. Instead she put on my new Peppa Pig panties. I’ve been wearing them over my nappy for a few days because I like them so much but this was a bit different. I’m quite a busy girl so I don’t have much time for actually sitting on the potty. So for the rest of the weekend I managed to keep quite dry with only a few accidents but Mammy thinks it was because I was holding it!

When I got into crèche today, Donncha and Dorothea had no nappies either. We all spent the day going for trips to the potties together and having a great chat while we were there. But not one of us used the potty for what it was for and Mammy now has to break her tumble dryer moratorium (whatever _that_ is) to wash and dry 5 changes of clothes for me for tomorrow!