Friday, August 27, 2010

Little Bit, EC, Potty Learning, Sign Language and the Like . . .

How's that for a jumbled title? I thought we'd take a break from all things "school" and talk abit about the little dynamo who lives at our house.  Hubby often comments that "I'm afraid of her" because she is SO BUSY!! She's great fun though!!!

Anyway, a few months back, I pretty much gave up on the whole EC thing. I must admit, reading on the EC message board and seeing all the people saying their children were "graduating" at 36 months and similar made me wonder, what's the point . . . the big girls were potty trained, at their own initiative, at 29 months so, ummm . . . I don't find 36 months very "early" (yes, I realized there are many children who don't potty train till closer to age 4, or even later, honestly, I blame disposables, and a great marketing from the diaper companies, convincing society that these late ages are the "norm" but we won't go there). Anyway, at some point she completely refused to have me hold her over the potty or toilet. She also, RARELY would go in the potty when I sat her on it. I still generally sat her on it for at least a few seconds during at-home diaper changes, but it was all pretty discouraging/pointless.

The pull-on, extra absorbent training pants, I'd come up with as a great alternative to normal cloth diapers when she was consistently pooping in the potty become much less "great" now that she was pooping in them again. . . and I must admit, in general, non-breastfed poop in cloth is challenging me this time, mainly because we spend most of our time on the main floor which doesn't have a bathroom, so swishing the poopy diaper in the toilet before tossing it in the wet bag isn't as convenient as it was when the powder room was right down the hall. So, we've been using disposables quite abit.

Somewhere around 11 mo. she figured out to remove disposable diapers (just undo the "velcro" tabs). So, we switched to pull-ups.

Then during our July trip she figured out how to remove a pull-up (or pull-on cloth diaper), sigh . . . Thankfully she hasn't mastered it when she's wearing other clothes (pulling a dress up and then her diaper down is beyond her), so we don't have to worry about it in public. At that point, she generally was only wearing just a diaper at bedtime (she's such a hot blooded little thing, she gets too hot if she sleeps in anything more than a diaper). So not a huge deal.

THEN she figured out how to remove her clothes if they just pull over her head (shirts or knit dresses w/o buttons or snaps), which alot of hers are. She then decided that if we are at home (or stay too long at someone else's house LOL), she doesn't need clothes. Ok, no big deal.

Last weekend at my parents, since there's a bathroom right off the living room, I used the Potette Plus on the adult toilet. She was so funny, we'd go in the bathroom and I'd take her diaper off, she'd put the Potette on the toilet, I'd sit her on it, and she'd immediately reach for the toilet paper (after the first few times of trying to keep her from unrolling the whole roll, I took it off the holder & set it out of her reach on the counter, but she'd still reach for it). When I gave her a little piece she'd promptly "wipe herself" (even though she hadn't done anything) and then drop it in the toilet. So  . . . she has it all figured out EXCEPT the most important step LOL.

THEN, this week she has decided diaper was also optional in these situations (well, at home anyway, I generally discourage/distract to avoid that if we're at someone else's house). So, the greater part of our days (when we're home) she now spends naked.  It drives Daddy crazy (and for that reason, I try to keep at least a diaper on her when he's around), and we've had a few accidents, but we've had quite afew pottyings in the potty too, woohoo!!! Granted, I offer the potty/sit her on the potty OFTEN. And will have her sit on the potty while we read stories & such, but she has also, a couple times, walked to the potty & sat down & peed all on her own (Mommy gets VERY excited when she does this). We've also had a couple times when I've seen her start to pee and said "wait, lets go in the potty!" and she stops and lets me carry her (very quickly) to the potty to finish. So, considering she's 17 mo old, I'd say we're doing pretty well . . . I wouldn't be in such a hurry if she didn't insist on removing diapers.

In other news, she's really starting to pick up on sign language. We're working on animals right now and she has several that she uses when we see them in books. And a few that are her own . . . my favorite, when she sees horses she pretends she's riding a horse, bounces up & down, it's SOO cute!

So, that's what's going on in Little Bit's world these days.

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