Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

I think I've mentioned that Peeper "wears panties all the time, now that she's three years old," but I've not given any sort of update on how that's going.

Actually, it's going quite well.

On her birthday, we went to playgroup in training pants, plus some extra absorbancy, and changed them twice, because she'd already peed when I took her to the potty.

A chat with the mom who was hosting us that day (she has two girls, four and six years old) gave me the confidence to go ahead and take her out in public (and, more importantly, to other people houses) in just panties, and she's done great.

(Basically, she assured me that nobody is going to hate me if Peeper pees on their carpet. I sure hope she's right.)

We still have to tell her when to go potty, she's not telling us at all yet, but in the, what, ten days (!?) that we've been doing this, she's gone on the big potty at friend's houses, Target, Red Robin, the grocery store, the convenience store, and Michael's, that I can think of off-hand, has learned to keep herself from falling in - sometimes with no hands! - and has only had three pee-pee accidents - one at home, one in the backyard, and one at T's house. (Sorry, T!)

Each of those times, I'd either said or at least thought that it was about time to go to the potty, then saw something shiny and didn't take her. Then saw something peedy.

She's had probably the same number of panty-poops, but that's nothing new. Two were at friend's houses, but that's only a issue in terms of having to change panties. Better than peeing on someone's carpet!

(My new diaper bag routine is a couple of pairs of spare panties, a pair of pants, a pair of socks (although we generally ditch our shoes at the door at friends' houses), plus one pair of training pants and a diaper, just in case it comes down to that.

I have pre-ordered (for my store, with the plan to snag one for Peeper) some newly-released bumGenius trainers, which are pull on/off, but with a side-snap escape hatch for poopies. One shell comes with five replacable liners, so you don't have to change the whole thing.

My plan was that when they arrive (late November or early December) we'd probably ditch the old faithful (and getting really short in the stride, and increasingly leaky, the poor dears) bumGenius 3.0s in favor of the trainers for night time, but now I'm starting to wonder if we'll need to do that.

That's right. What you're looking at there is Peeper asleep in her big girl bed, wearing nothing but panties.

(What you're looking at beside the bed is Mr. Panda's booty. He's our make-shift bed rail / floor cushion.)

This is the fourth night that she's slept there, and the second night that she's gone diaper-less, and so far - knock wood - so good.

On Friday, I had her all bathed and diapered and jammied when she either pooped (which she often does, as soon as her jammies go on) or had a pee-pee leak (see above, re sad, old diapers) so I was changing her. When she was nakey, she escaped, and hopped up into her big girl bed, which she'd not slept in since before we got sick at the beginning of September.

I offered to finish her diaper there, but she hid under the blanket and said something about going to sleep there.

I asked her if she wanted to get her night-night goody in her big girl bed, and much to my surprise, she said yes.

To my bigger surprise, she actually fell asleep when I nursed her in it (that's a first), which was around 11:30. Shrike got in around midnight and we talked for a while. Peeper woke up, nursed down, woke back up almost immediately (I guess I snuck out too soon) and nursed back down, before we went to bed around 1:30.

To my astonishment, I didn't hear a peep (so to speak) from her until 8:30 the next morning!

On Saturday, she took a long, diaperless nap in her bed (yeah, I wasn't thrilled, but she was soooo tired) and was up until about 1:30 am. She woke back up at 3:30, and I just crawled in with her and slept there for the remainder of the night. Which was not nearly as long as I'd hoped, given that we had no plans to get up early for the next day.

Last night, she was really tired, and was just having a rough time all around. There were tears and wailing and much very uncharacteristic distress.

When I tried to get her diapered and jammied, she was having none of it. She really would have rather stayed nakey, but eventually started crying for panties. I told her that she had to wear a diaper to sleep, because "It's a really long time, and if you're just in panties, you'll get pee-pee in the bed."

To which she responded, "III wooon't doooo daaaat! III wooon't doooo daaaat! III wooon't doooo daaaat!"

Oh my God. What could I say?

At this point in potty training, am I going to force my kid into a diaper, when she's begging for panties and promising (?) not to pee the bed.

No. No, I am not.

I did tell her, though that she could sleep in her big girl bed in panties (It's a crib mattress, thus waterproof), but if she wanted to sleep in the big bed, she would have to wear a diaper. (We do have a zip-on plastic cover on it, but it has ripped - right down the middle. Thus, the only part that's not protected, is right where she sleeps. Of course.)

She opted for the panties in the big-girl bed.

She fell asleep around 9 in my lap, but like a big dumb ass, I blew the transfer and woke her up. There were a couple of false starts at nursing to sleep in the bed, but she finally conked out in my lap around 11:30 or so.

She had pee-peed maybe fifteen or thirty minutes before that, so I just crossed my fingers, and made plans to wash the sheets in the morning.

I crawled into the big bed and snugged my wife (again!), and Peeper slept until about 5:45. The first thing I did when I got to her, was feel her booty - and she was dry!  Before I got in bed, I took her to the potty and we both peed while she whimpered, then I spent about an hour in bed with her before I snuck out. She slept until 7:57 (seriously, clock is going off at 8, can I get three more minutes?) and was still dry!

I told all the moms at playgroup about it, and she went around the room collecting high-fives!

Tonight, we were torturing her on the way home, around 6 pm, to keep her awake, and around 8, she was begging to "go nighty-night in my big girl bed" but when I relented and laid down, she nursed a while and caught her second wind.

While she was back up, Shrike and I rearranged her bedroom, primarily to make it more comfortable for me to nurse her in that bed.

See, the thing is - in the big bed, she's on my right, but I can just roll a little farther over toward her and give her the left breast just about as easily as the right. But that works because the left one is bigger, and stretches farther. (Oh, come on. You aren't symmetrical either. If you think you are, go strip down and stand in front of a mirror. I'll wait. . . . See?)

But, the way we had her big girl bed set up, I had to lie with her on my left, and it was very hard to get the right breast to her. I had to lean way over and tense up to keep from just rolling on top of her, and usually use my hand to keep it in position.

Lately, my neck and shoulders have been really tense and sore, and I'm thinking that it could be related. I was sort of feeling it before she started sleeping there, but it's gotten much worse over the past few days.

So, we finally got around to shifting things around to the places (more or less) that we've been talking about ever since we converted the crib into the big girl bed.

We unanchored the book/toy shelves, put the crib dresser in that corner, scooted the bed up against it, so it's a headboard, and put the shelves on a different wall, then re-anchored them. I also moved a couple of the panda prints (calendar cuts, actually) because they looked funny with the furniture in the new places.

Other than figuring out where the hell the shelves could go, it was really much easier than we evidently thought it was going to be.

I'm not sure I'm 100% happy with where everything is, but it is much more comfortable, and the little dresser is no longer sitting in the big middle of the floor.

The "book nook" isn't so nooky (huh?) any more, but that's okay. When she's taller, we can flip it upright and stick it in the corner, and it will be very cozy.

Shrike really would have liked to have taken both the glider and the changing table out of the room, but for absolutely no logical reason, I just wasn't ready to do that yet.

We've never actually used the glider for rocking/nursing, and evidently, she no longer wears diapers (I'm not promising that we're done with them - that may have been  fluke, and she may not have another dry night for years), but I just can't do it.

Yes, I know, there's plenty of room for diapers - or the new trainers - and "washies" in the crib dresser, if we even still need them, and there's a nice, comfy bed to sit on, but nope, just not ready to make it that much of a "big girl room."

I'm not really sure how I feel about all this.

The potty-training thing, I'm mostly thrilled with, but it is just a little bittersweet.

The big girl bed, I'm very ambivalent about.

On the one hand, I am so proud of her for being big enough to make this decision (at least for these past few nights, who's to say she won't be back in with us tomorrow, for another six months) and to be doing it so smoothly, and on that same hand, it sure is nice to be able to actually snug with Shrike at night again, but on the other hand, I have so loved our family bed, and I sort of miss it.

One thing I'm certain of is that these past few nights have made me even more glad that we've chosen to cosleep for the past three years, because this thing about having to get up out of bed when the kid wakes up in the middle of the night is bullshit. I don't know how people do it with a newborn.

I keep asking myself if I'm pushing her on this, but it really does seem to be her decision. I gave her the option and she really ran with it. I've mentioned the very same option numerous times over the past few weeks, and she's had no interest (except when A and J slept in her bed, of course) but for now, at least, she's all about it.

I've also been trying to "check in" with Shrike about her feeling on the whole matter, and I think she's about in the same place that I am.

She was saying this evening, that while there are, no doubt, things that we are doing wrong with Peeper, and there are, surely, things we're doing that are "spoiling" (ugh, I hate that term) her, that she's sure that letting her decide when she's ready to move out of the family bed and when she's ready to stop getting goody are not among them.


I told her that, in a way, it seems a little unfair, because I still get to cuddle her in bed when we nurse to sleep (and back down) and I sometimes (well, one night, so far) still get to sleep with her, if I conk out before she does.

Shrike acknowledged that, but said that, on the other hand, she doesn't miss it nearly enough to make it worth sleeping in that bed.

I hear ya.

Update - Morning: She woke up around 1:30 or so and I took her to pee and nursed her back to sleep, but she wasn't settling down solidly enough for me to escape. When I woke up around 5 am, I was able to sneak boff, but that only lasted about half an hour. Took her to pee again, went back to bed with her and we both slept until it was time to get up around 8. With those two potty trips, she and the bed stayed dry again!

Potty Party

As I've mentioned before, Peeper now wears panties at home during the daytime. She is usually mostly sort of compliant about going and trying when we remind her to, and when she tries she almost always goes (if she sits for more than a second), but she has yet to give us a heads-up that she has to go.

There were a couple of incidents a while back, where she said, "Hey Mama!" repeatedly, as I asked "What, Honey?" and then she peed, standing right there.

So, we've talked quite a bit about "What do you say when you feel the feeling that you have to go?"

"MAMA! PEE-PEE!"

And yet, no.

And lately, she's only hit and miss about letting us know that she's already gone.

So, in an effort to coerce encourage her to sound the pee-pee alarm before it's too late, we pulled out the Sesame Street potty chart that Santa Claus brought last Christmas. (Yes, we knew at the time that it was way too early for it.)

We've been holding off on charts and rewards and such because she's been so compliant about it all, so far, but we really don't know how to get her to make this leap.

(I suspect the answer is, as Dr. Sears would say, "The tincture of time," but we figure a dose of Elmo can't hurt.)

Anyway, this chart is pretty cool, in that there are five different columns in which you put stickers for five different parts of the process:

Elmo gives her stickers featuring Dorothy, his pet goldfish, for "Uh oh, I gotta go!"

Abby gives her pumpkin stickers for sitting cooperatively on the potty. (When we say, for as long as we say. Sort of.)

Cookie Monster gives her cookie stickers for actually pee-peeing (or pooping, but that's not happening).

Big Bird gives her stickers with his teddy bear, Radar, on them for wiping. (And flushing, according to the chart, but she's excused from that part because our flusher is too hard for her to operate. She makes up for it by flushing twenty times while I'm peeing at Target.)

Ernie gives her Rubber Ducky stickers for washing her hands.

As you can see here, if she sits, she usually pees, she's got no problem with wiping and washing, but she's yet to tell us that she has to go.

Every time she goes and we do the stickers, she asks for an Elmo sticker, and I tell her again what Elmo gives stickers for. Still hasn't happened.

On a related note - do you see how almost all the stickers are right in the little circles, and only one circle has been skipped. I think she has applied all but maybe the first set, all by herself.

I should get video of that process.

There are usually four stickers being handed out, and for each one, she holds it up to all the "wrong" columns and says "Is it along (does it belong) dere? Nope!" until she gets to the right one, and sticks it on.

This evening, after way too much "Well, if Peeper sits on the potty she'll fill her up Abby column, and we can get ice cream after dinner . . . . " we went to Baskin Robbins and had some ice cream to celebrate.

(We were heading out for Mexican food, and Baskin Robbins is across the parking lot from the restaurant, so it was going to be very convenient.)

Ice cream is evidently very serious business. I promise she really was having fun.

See?

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All Aboard the Potty Train

Shrike's been hearing all about Peeper's potty adventures, but hasn't gotten to witness much, because she's been at work every day since we started with the panties. This evening, though, she finally got to take a few trips on the potty train.

(We literally "chugga-chugga" and "wooo-wooo" to get her into the bathroom. She loves it.)

And, especially for Mommy, there was even a poop! That went directly into the potty!

Brave or Crazy?

One complication of Peeper's Big Panty Project is the unpredictability of her naps. I've been struggling with what to do when she wants to get in bed and nurse in the middle of the afternoon. Do I make her change into a diaper, only to have her pop back up to play a few minutes later, or do I risk her falling asleep and peeing in the bed?

So, yesterday and today, I compromised and told her that she could goody in the bed in panties if we put down towels first, in case she took a nap, "because when you're asleep you won't know you need to pee-pee, so it will just come out."

As you can see, she did nap in her panties.

She fell asleep nursing, woke about an hour later and nursed back down, woke again about fourty-minutes after that, and then I fell asleep with her and she nursed-napped for another hour or so.

And after all that?

Still dry.

In and Out

This was our day: In and out of the house, in and out of the pool, in and out of the panties, and on and off the potty.

She wore panties all day, from the time she changed out of last night's diaper, until she put on tonight's.

I washed a load of diapers last night after she was dressed for bed, and there is now one dirty diaper in the can.

But, whatever laundry time I might save on diapers, I will make up for with panties. I think we went through about five pairs today, mostly because of swimming in them (three?) but also a couple of poop incidents (two - but one pair had also been swum in).

There were no pee incidents! (Not so lucky yesterday. The one time she's peed in her panties, she was sitting in Shrike's computer chair. Right in front of Shrike. There's now a thickly-folded towel on it, and on her kitchen chair. Yes, she has a grownup chair now, she won't use a booster anymore.)

She's never actually told us when she's needed to go, but we're sending her every thirty minutes or so, so she's not had a chance.

I think tomorrow I'll space it out some more and see if she can give me a heads-up when she feels the urge.

So, I know we deserve most of the credit for her being dry all day (well, except for pool water!) but I have to give her credit for being about 90% agreeable about stopping and going when I've told her it's time, and for suddenly being very pro-panty.

We did some clothes shopping for all of us yesterday, and bought her a 7-pack of Elmo and Abby Cadabby panties, which were a big hit. I think she wore two pairs of them today - the Elmos in the photo, and an Abby pair.

Then, this evening, I was on the hunt for a toy and looked under the "sofa" table by the front window, and what did I see behind it, but a pair of the panties that the Easter Bunny brought - still rolled up and taped closed.

That's where her Easter basket things were sitting, and I guess they'd fallen off the back of the table.

I didn't try to snow her that he'd just hopped by or anything. I told her "Look, here's a pair of the panties that the Easter Bunny brought. They must have fallen off the table," but I'm not sure how she interpreted it, because she took them, and looked at them in awe, and whispered "Eeaasster Bunnny pannntees!"

They're just plain pink, with rainbow stitching around the waist like the white ones she had on yesterday, but they were from the Easter Bunny when she wasn't expecting them , so she was pretty damn impressed.


Later she told me "Want some Easter Bunny candy."

Sorry kid, we got a pair of bonus panties, but we didn't miss any candy. (I checked.)

This panty thing's only been going on for a couple of days, so I wouldn't be surprised if she decided tomorrow, or the next day, or next week that she hates them and only wants diapers, and I know that best-case-scenario, we've got a long way to go, but at the moment, I'm feeling pretty proud of us all.

Panty Time

Up til now, I've only been able to talk Peeper into putting on big-girl panties a few times (including yesterday, to swim in her pool), but when she got done swimming (in a diaper and her jammies), she didn't want to put a diaper on.

She played nakey for a few minutes, but when she fell and sraped her booty on her desk (Well, it wasn't a scrape, exactly, but you know that thing where something grabs against your skin and doesn't slide, and it hurts like hell? That, on her still-damp booty.) I was able to convince her that "You know, if you'd been wearing a diaper or panties, you would have just slid right off and it wouldn't have hurt."
I put her little potty in the sunroom where she was playing, and set up the big potty for her (stepstool in front, insert in the seat - she does great with that setup and can get up all by herself if she's in the mood) and told her that "If you feel pee-pee coming, tell me and go to the potty!" and set the oven timer and told her that when it went off, it would be time to either go potty or change into a diaper.

And it worked.

She never reported needing to pee-pee, but I was sending her so often, she probably never had the chance to feel the need. I started with about fiften minutes, and spaced it out to thirty or more, and every time I said it was potty time, she was willing to go (after a bit of "encouragement" sometimes) and she took her panties off almost all by herself and climbed "aboard the potty train" and pee-peed. Probably five or six times!

And (almost) everytime, she washed her hands afterward, including singing the ABC song (to wash for the right amount of time). I've changed the last part for handwashing purposes "Now my hands are washed all clean, and there's no poop germs on me!"

When I thought she was going to fall asleep nursing, I told her that she needed to change into a diaper and she said, "Nooooo! Paaaantteeees!" which I saw as a good sign.

As it turned out, when I had her get up to pee-pee, planning to put a diaper on her, she caught a second wind and didn't nap for another hour or so, so that bought her some more panty time.

Later, she went "swimming" again, wearing the panties, and when we came in and took them off, she asked for a diaper and we then took a nap.

When we woke up, I suggested she go potty and change back into panties, but she was done with that game for the day.

In all, I think she spent about three hours in them, went in the potty five or six times, and stayed dry. (Well, other than hopping into a kiddie pool full of yucky water while wearing them! By the way, it's now been dumped, sprayed out and refilled with less yucky - so far - water.)

We're still a long, long way from being potty trained, and I wouldn't necessarily say that we even consider ourselves to be actively in the process of it, but it was a very good day, as potty-things go!

Potty Party

As promised, we celebrated Peeper's first completed row of Potty Chart stickers today, with lunch at Red Robin. She chose a chocolate cupcake for dessert, which she was nice enough to share with us.

When it arrived, Shrike and I sang (quietly) the Peeper Pee-Peed on the Potty song, and she loved it.

Peeper's Potty Progress

Peeper's been in a pro-potty phase for the past couple of weeks, and while we're taking it slow and low-key, when I realized that I couldn't remember whether she'd gone once or twice that day, I thought it might be worth setting up some sort of tracking system.

She's getting a more complex chart for Christmas, with separate minicharts for different "deliverables" (to quote one of the Amazon reviews): "Uh oh, gotta go!" "Sit on the potty" "Go in the potty" and "Wipe, flush and wash hands," - or something like that.


We might wait a while before implementing it, though, because this one seems to be a bit of a stretch for her, as straight-forward as it is.


When she pee-pees in the potty, "we get to put a sticker on the chart" (as opposed to "she earns a sticker") and when (well, if) she poopies on the potty, "we get to put two stickers!" and this evening, I declared that telling us that she's just pee-peed or poopied (which she did) is also sticker-worthy, as will be letting us know that she needs to go, when that starts happening.

When we get a row full of stickers "we'll do something fun to celebrate" (as opposed to "she gets a reward" - we're going for a team effort, non-coersive sort of thing here) and when she fills up the whole page, "we'll do something really special to celebrate!"

I thought that she might not want to "give up" her stickers by putting them on the chart, so I declared that there would be "one for the chart and one for Peeper," but I quickly discovered that she likes putting them on the chart, and wants to put even the "one to play with" on there, so I'm not quite sure how to handle that.

I'm not sure she really gets the part about filling in the squares, and going across the row (there's a lot of guidance - and resticking - involved on my part) but on the other hand, the first time she stuck one herself, she put it in the final square on the first row. It's probably giving her a bit too much credit to think that she was trying to trick us into thinking it was full, but it was kind of funny.

So, point being, as of this evening, the first row is full! Okay, I will admit that at least three of these stickers were actually for Mama catching the second half of a pee-pee in the potty but, hey, that's close enough at this point.

So, I think that we're going to go out to lunch tomorrow, and there will be ice cream involved, and there might just be a potty song sung. Probably just by Mama and Mommy, because we really think we should save the waitress singing for when the whole page is filled.

Just kidding. Shrike won't let me ask them to sing a potty song. Potty party pooper.

We're a long, long, looooong way from big girl panties, but I think we've definitely taken a few baby steps down the path in that direction.

Daily Peep: Potty Talk

As I've mentioned before, we have a potty chair in the bathroom, and Peeper thinks it's great fun to play with.

She seems to have a bit of an idea what it's for, but doesn't really seem to see it as a necessity.

Not only has she squatted and peed in the floor heating vent a couple of times, but lately, she's squatted and peed on the same exact spot on the bathmat, several times.

Now, you might think that poor mat's been spending a lot of time in the washing machine, but I figure if she's going to keep doing it, what's the point in rushing it off the laundry, just to be peed on again.

On the other hand, I've been a pet owner for about a million years longer than I've been a parent, so I just keep having this nagging thought that, "Well, of course she's going to keep peeing on it, as long as she can smell . . . Oh, wait."

So, basically, before and after her bath, she wanders around the bathroom, periodically squatting.

And I follow her around with the bowl from the potty chair, shoving it under her butt everytime she bends down.

Sometime she ignores it, but other times, like tonight, she has a seat for a little while.

There were a few drops of something in it when she stood up. It might have been drips of bath water, or she might have actually peed in it.

I'm kind of hoping she didn't, though, because, well, this: