Thursday, April 17, 2008

Why I Love Febreeze

When I write the memoir covering this part of my life, I think the title will be, And Everything Smells Vaguely of Urine. Or maybe not.

Several weeks ago, Ellie was having more accidents than usual, and I was getting really frustrated. Then it occurred to me: there are often set-backs right before big developmental leaps forward.

That was indeed this case here, as - celebration! - Ellie has taken control of her potty needs. She still needs assistance with dressing and undressing (though far less than she used to) and getting up onto the toilet, but I no longer have to remember: what time did she last go? should I insist that she go now or wait a little longer?

She tells us, every time. Alleluia!

On the other hand, Ada has developed an interesting quirk that's insuring that we go through diapers at a prodigious rate. While playing, she'll periodically run up to me - that child is in perpetual motion, often just spinning around in circles until she falls down when she has nothing else to occupy her - saying, "Potty!" Then she runs to the bathroom and waits at the door, saying, "Diaper!"

She wants to sit on the potty, with her diaper off. Then she jumps right back up again, without allowing time to accomplish anything useful, though there's probably no need - the diaper is already wet.

I am delighted that my 14-month-old seems to be comfortable with the idea of the potty and possibly is even alerting me when she's gone.

But seriously? Already? I was rather hoping for a break. At least it's getting warmer, which means that clothes are easier to remove.

3 comments:

BriteLady said...

Congrats to Ellie on her potty training success! It's such a nice relief when you can just depend on them to tell you :)

Char did the same thing as Ada at about the same age. For a while I was able to find pull-on diapers that were cheaper than potty-training pull-ups but easier to slide up and down than a normal disposable for her potty-using whims. Alas, Pampers must have decided that they competed too much with their really expensive pull-ups and quit selling them. I don't know what kind of diapers you're using (or if you're on cloth), but maybe some of the generic pull-ups might be cheap enough. In regular disposables, I've found Target brand to actually be pretty good quality and massively cheaper than name brands...

Trystan has also been crawling to the potty when he has to poop (don't know whether it's before or after some times..), a fact that is incredibly awesome because of the large percentage of kids like him who are never ever continent without dramatic measures (daily enemas, laxatives, surgical procedures, etc). It's giving me hope that he seems to be aware of what's going on. Time will tell!

Beachcomber said...

Congratulations Ellie!

I have to say that my Little Bear (2 yrs, 4 mos) isn't really showing any interest in her potty. She sat on it for a while after we first bought it. Now she doesn't even want to do that. At least she tells us when she poops. But not before. Ugh.

How I yearn for diaperlessness...

Beverly said...

Hey, that was going to be the title of my life story!
My husband told me he couldn't tell whether our daughter or one of the cats peed on something and I told him, "The kids' pee just kinda spells like pee, but the cats' pee is totally gross."
Yeah, my house has a pee-smell scale.