The big news for the 2 weeks is, the big girls went on their first big solo trip! (Solo, in the sense of, without Mommy or Daddy, that is. Obviously they don't drive and such yet, hee hee). They went with Grandmom (Rodney's mom) & Aunt Lynette (Rodney's sister) to Indiana to visit their great grandparents and other assorted relatives.
But now, back to chronological order because, it's how I think . . .
We drove back from Florida on Sun-Tues. It was uneventful. Little Bit was less thrilled with long periods of car-time at the end of the trip than she had been on the way down, but she survived AND as long as we didn't try to go TOO long at a time, she even kept her diaper dry, woo-hoo!!
Got to my parents' house on Tuesday, and just kind of hung out there the rest of the day. Visited with my grandparents, and such.
The girls and I came the rest of the way home on Wednesday. Ahhhh . . . good to be home! But of course, we had to jump right into preparation for the big girls' Indiana trip. So we had a fun few days of laundry, and grocery shopping, and generally trying to get back to normal. Just in time to get the big girls all packed and send them off to Grandmom's on Monday. They spent the night at Grandmom's Monday night and then headed to Indiana on Tuesday.
I guess they're doing great, when they call, the main thing they want to know is "How's Little Bit", so apparently she's the only one they miss LOL. They also try to talk to her on the phone most evenings. She's still abit confused by it all. Doesn't get that she's supposed to actually TALK, but likes to listen to them talk and also is fascinated by the green "android" picture that shows on my phone when I'm on the phone.
The girls apparently thought that I should just stop "living" without them around, they were most annoyed to hear that Little Bit and I still did things like going to visit our neighbor, Miss Judy without them LOL. They were also less then thrilled to hear that they missed book club. I wasn't going to mention it, but they happened to call while I was there, so I told them where I was. They were quite certain that Pastor Mike must be very lonely without them there (our bookclub is at the pastor's house, the big girls generally spend the time talking Pastor Mike's ear off and generally torturing him upstairs while we have our book club downstairs.
Little Bit and I had a quiet week of just us. I tried to use at least part of each nap to get some cleaning and decluttering done. Didn't get as much done as I'd have liked (of course I COULD be doing that now instead of writing this blog post, but I'm pretty happy sitting here right now), but got a good start on things. I was concerned that she would miss the big girls too much, and keep looking for them, but she really hasn't. She did ask about them the first time we got in the car, pointed to their seats and made her "questioning" sound (I don't know how to describe it, it's a little grunt that she uses when she has a question LOL), but I just said "sister's aren't here" and she was fine with it. Here at home, she never really asked where they were.
This week has confirmed what I've always felt, that it's not "easier" to have the big kids gone . . .that whole idea of "how can you get anything done if you don't send your kids off to school?". Now obviously if ALL the children were in school it would be different, but for this season, when I have a little one at home, it's actually easier to have the big girls around too. In addition to their chores, that I have to do when they're not here, the main thing is the ability to leave them with Little Bit for short periods of time, or send them to do things that it's difficult to do WITH Little Bit. Laundry was a challenge this week without them here to either stay with her while I went to the basement, or go to the basement for me. Typically, they stay with Little Bit in the family room while I start the laundry each day, and then they get the laundry out of the washer and carry the basket up to the clothes line, then they watch Little Bit outside while I hang the laundry. With them gone, I tried to get the laundry started in the morning before Rodney left for work (so he could stay with Little Bit upstairs), but then I had to take her down to the basement with me while I got the laundry out of the washer and have her walk up the hill next to me while I carried the laundry basket. She did fine playing outside on her own while I hung the clothes, she likes to love on the cats, who are, thankfully pretty tolerant.
Thankfully, we had less laundry than usual this week because Little Bit is SO close to being potty trained!! So, whereas I generally do 2-3 loads of diapers/towels per week, I did a load on Monday before the girls left, and haven't had to do one since. When we're home, I leave her nakey butt full time, and I don't think she's had any misses at home this week. When we're out, it's still hit or miss. The car can be a challenge, because she will tell me, and hold it briefly, but if I'm somewhere that I can't quickly get stopped to potty her, she'll go ahead & go in her diaper (this is my fault, since I haven't ever focused on stopping when we're driving, so I don't think she's confident that I WILL stop). The other on-going issue is that she likes to "drive" the car & at this point, the only place I have to set her potty in the car is on the driver seat, so she gets distracted with "driving" and forgets to actually go potty, if she doesn't need to go badly). I need to either make it a priority to keep the passenger seat cleared off, or see if I can arrange things such that I can set the potty on the floor behind my seat to help with that. Still, she did pretty well. At Miss Judy's house, she gets busy playing or whatever and doesn't want to take time to potty, so we sometimes end up with a wet diaper there, other times she tells me, and goes on the potty. For the most part, when shopping, she stayed dry, though she had one accident when she was wanting to walk and was busy looking at the shoes and didn't tell me she needed to potty. . . so we're not to the point where I'm willing to put her in panties yet, when we're out, but that's ok.
In bigger (potty training) news, she's now diaper-free at night. A couple nights ago, when I was getting ready for bed, after she went potty I got out her diaper to put on her and she said "no" and took the diaper back to the diaper basket. So, I took a chance, and left her diaper free that night. She did fine, BUT I knew that she's not been consistently keeping her diaper dry overnight, so, the next day I set up the bed for diaper-free sleeping. There's already a wool blanket under the sheet to protect the mattress, but I wanted things set up such that, if she peed, I didn't have to either change the bed in the middle of the night, or have her &/or me sleep on wet sheets. So I laid a fleece throw blanket down, on top of the sheet, in the area where she sleeps, and then laid a beach towel, folded in half, on top of that, and let her sleep on the towel. I put an extra beach towel at the foot of the bed, in reach, so that if she did pee, I could just switch out the beach towels. I also used a lightweight fleece blanket over her, and then the comforter over that, so that the comforter wouldn't absorb any pee if she peed and I didn't notice right away. And that's how she's slept the last 2 nights!! Both nights, she's ended up getting REALLY wiggly in teh early morning hours, and so I've taken her to the potty. She doesn't like it, but she DOES pee, and then after she's peed, she sleeps much better the rest of the night. So, as I've suspected, alot of the wiggling and disruption to our nights has been because she needed to pee. I'm hoping that as she gets used to this new routine, she won't fuss about being taken to the potty during the night, but for now, the little bit of fussing seems like the better alternative to an hour or more of wiggling and keeping us both awake. So that's another step toward Little Bit being fully diaper free :)
And now, the big girls are on their way home, and then we'll be jumping into Thanksgiving preparations this week!
No comments:
Post a Comment