The Real Poop

Since late winter or early spring, Fynnie's been gearing up for potty training. I was actually looking forward to it. I had three goals this summer, potty train Fynn, get her to take naps in her own freakingbedbyherselfsoIcouldactuallygetthingsdonearoundhere *ohm* and learn to french braid Madelyn's hair.

Summer ended three weeks ago for me, and I'll tell up front, I'm one for three. French braiding and potty training are not on my current horizon.

We started off with converting her crib to a toddler bed. I will not say that Fynnie is a difficult child. Really, she's not. But she happened to be born after her rule loving, get-it-right-the-first-time big sister, over whose successes Tom and I would often high five as if we'd really had a hand in it.

Yes, karma spent the first 28 months of Mad's life preparing to backhand us into reality. Success.

But making the switch went pretty well. That was the big one. I put it at the top of the agenda because I just could not spend one more entire summer nursing Fynnie through naps (or holding her in nursing position while she snoozed and drooled in my lap with her spidey senses working around the clock to make sure "her booboo" didn't find its way back inside my bra).

It's not as though I can snuggle her, put her down and walk away, but I can eventually walk away, and that's what matters to me.

Next up, potty training! I was kind of excited. Fynnie was kind of excited (about the promise of getting "canny" every time she used the toilet), too!

With Madelyn, we did the half naked method. It worked great, and I could see no reason why we wouldn't go the same route for Fynnie.

Except that, oh yeah, my girls could not be more different from one another if they were born on opposite sides of the earth to completely different parents.

The big hold up getting started was our schedule. Because of my allergy shots (which are a waste of time happen close to my work), I did not take several weeks off in a row. I worked every Tuesday. The girls went to Grandma's every Tuesday.

And good friends of ours who were expecting twins dropped their two older girls off at Grandma's one day a week, too, but not Tuesdays. So the girls were also there on Wednesday or Thursday each week.

And, because I now actually have something of a life up here in the High Desert, the girls and I often had other places to go.

Three weeks into my summer "vacation," we made plans to start potty training on Thursday morning, with a goal of being done with day training by the end of the weekend.

Mad was essentially done in two days, which I blamed more on me and trying to get started the first day I was home alone with her and her one month old baby sister.

In advance of that, I was occasionally letting Fynnie run around the house half naked, and she was occasionally using the toilet.

The Tuesday night before potty training, we came home and she had a good try on the potty. I let her run around while I went outside to spend five minutes in the garden.

Coming back in, I found my very upset little girl had pooped on the floor.

I was glad she was upset, honestly; it meant she got it.  But I also tried to reassure her that everything was okay.

As we came out of the bathroom from cleaning her up, I saw that our dog, Maisy, had eaten the poop.

But not before walking through it.

Aaand that's when Tom and Madelyn got home.

Two years ago Madelyn somehow managed to train our big galloop of a dog to race back and forth from the door to the back of the house whenever someone gets home.

Over and over.

This is the point where I'd say Fynnie really freaked out.

She'd been upset before, but this scene and the yelling at the dog and the mess all over the place and the smell... I am wondering if she is not scarred for life.

No joke.

Potty training? Over.

For the past six weeks or so, the main focus is what can we do to make Fynnie poop?

She used to go 2-3 times every morning.

Now? It can be three days.

We've altered her diet to the point that she sometimes cannot help but go.

She thinks dried apricots are "gums" and that all the other special treats she gets are the new "canny."

She can spend a day and a half randomly squatting and looking scared. When it can no longer be avoided, I find myself holding this crying, sweating, grunting, shaking little girl. I whisper softly in her ear and tell her it's going to be okay, she's going to feel so much better when this is over and I'm so proud of her for working so hard.

At this point she's pooping every 1-2 days. It's better, seems less painful, but it's still upsetting her.

I'm not sure how to help her move past this.

Did you ever have a kid who withheld poop? How did you help them overcome it?

Help!

Vacating

This is about 20 minutes from my home.  When I say I live in the middle of nowhere, this is what I mean.

It's a Joshua Tree, in case you were wondering.  They are protected.  If one were to suddenly pop up in our yard, we would have to keep it.  To me, they are straight out of Dr. Seuss.

 These hills and trees are a memory from my childhood.

My parents had a motorhome.  My sister and I got the bunk beds in the back.  Sometimes I would wake up in the morning, look out the window and see these deep green trees and the wheat-colored grass.  It was when I fell in love with the earth.

This is the face of a bribed child.  She did not scream or otherwise cause complete strangers to come to her rescue at any of the restroom breaks.

The same could not be said two days earlier at a potty pit stop (her first time using a public toilet) at my office. 

Making time to meet up with a friend and her family in Monterey?  Freaking brilliant.  (I mean my friend, Bridgie, is brilliant.  I haven't asked if I can post photos of B and her gorgeous family, so you'll have to imagine the cutest baby girl with a round, barely blonde head, deliciously full cheekies and big blue eyes.  Look where she had us meet her!)

Clear and total resemblance.

Fynnie's interpretation of the sign and her sister.   

Or pretend sharing.  You know she doesn't really intend for you to take it, right?  Whew! 

This slide is about two stories high.

 The best way to work off an eight hours car ride.

 Again, Fynnie's version.

The outfit, in case you are wondering, consisted of a sunsuit that was perfect for the 96 degree weather we'd enjoyed earlier in the day.  Completely mismatched pants and sweater?  Mama's last minute "what if" pieces that came in handy for the 64 degree afternoon in Monterey.  Too bad it wasn't "What if Fynnie would like to have stylish photos of her infancy?" 

Somebody get this girl a teddy bear!

Doing her best Sheena Easton (seriously, is that how you remember her?).

Potty Training ~ How Long Until It's Truly Over?

Mad has done a bang up job in the world of potty training.  Perhaps you saw that even Santa noticed.  *We have been diaper free and dry after naps for a little more than a month.  Last week we started going diaper free at night, too.  Candy rewards are not mentioned, but they are given with glee when requested.


So my question is, when do you know you're done potty training and can say she's trained?


***Yes, I say "we."  Really, Mad's the only one who's new to going without a diaper, I swear.  For me it's been at least four months.

Argh! and Yea!

I have been attempting to add photos to a pending post since Sunday night.  Still only extremely limited success (and none of the cute ones).  I'm hoping my cries for help are the reason "image uploads" is going to be serviced tomorrow.  In the meantime, here is a random sampling of my life:


I set up my phone so I can send posts to Blogger, but there must be a step I'm missing.


This has been stuck in my head for a week (I kind of like it):

Potty training is going very well.  I gave up the ridiculous idea that changing Mad's diaper while she's laying down will confuse her or I'm failing to reinforce that she's not a baby anymore. So, no more poopy hands for Mama.  Whoever thought of using a timer to make kids go to the potty is a fricken genius.  I'd kiss him or her on the mouth!  And realizing that I can use my cell phone alarm instead of the oven timer (thereby not having to rest Fynn's perpetually nursing body on the stove so I can make the ringing stop) makes me a freaking genius, too!  (At least to me.)  Mad's been telling me when she needs to go during nap time and overnight.  I mostly make it to her in time, but she's diapered then, so it's not as urgent.  She's getting good at telling me when she needs to go the rest of the day, too.  As I'm getting a sense of her timing, we are not living our entire mornings in 10 minute increments.  This is great!  However, when I offered to let her wear panties while we took Brother to school, she declined.


My friend with the lung situation has been tested four different ways.  One shows a borderline cancer score (6-10 typically means cancer; she got a 6).  However, a biopsy shows that there are no lesions.  It's not exactly a clean bill of health.  The doctor wanted to do another procedure, but the test results weren't close enough to 100% reliable for L, so she declined.  She'll go through another PET scan in two months to see if it's grown.  There are so many things to say or think about a friend in this situation.  I think I know how I'd handle much of it.  For one thing, I'd want to know as much as possible.  The opposite is true for her.  No googling, no super-involved conversations with the doctor.  Her philosophy is that everything she ever felt like she wouldn't be able to survive has happened, with this being the big one (if it is, indeed, the big one), but she's survived everything else.  Why not this, too, right?


In odd news that I probably shouldn't be mentioning, tomorrow would be my 20th anniversary if I'd stayed married the first time.  I cannot imagine still being married to him.  I have felt exactly that way since we agreed to divorce.  Yet every year at this time I feel a mental countdown.  I have no idea where he's at, if he's still married to wife number three (or was it four?  I couldn't keep track), or even if he's still alive.  I am glad we're not in contact, but I would tolerate him and be decent if he were part of Corey's life.  Fricken jackass.


Over the past 24 hours or so we've had some spectacular thunder and lightning.  Tom, Fynn and I sat upstairs in our bedroom watching (well, Fynnie nursed... is it possible that she's starting her next growth spurt so early?!?).  The strangest thing to me was the lack of heavy winds during most of it.  The gentle breeze made it possible to sit here with the window open.... until all of a sudden the storm got serious.  Wind, rain, hail.  Little chilly until Tom could close the window.  I'm so glad we have wireless Internet or I'd be stuck playing solitaire on my phone tonight while Tom and Fynn sleep.


I don't remember mentioning, but I have scheduled my tubal.  Two weeks from this Friday.  I'm good with the decision again.  Really, I always have been; I realized it while talking to my doctor.  I'll be 40 in the spring.  As I said to the doc, "There's room in the house.  There isn't room in the budget or the calendar."  Or the car.  Corey barely fits back there with the girls.  It's good we've gone so many places as a family, but if this continues, we'll have to get a bigger car.


There is still a slim chance we can make it to Chicago for Christmas, because the state still owes me money.  If nothing else unexpected happens, the money I'll get through PFL may be enough to do a slightly shorter trip.


Let's end with some good news.  I got my statement today showing that my check will be this month will only be a few hundred dollars short.  Compared to last month, I feel rich!

Potty Training, Day One (Not for the Squeamish)

What I've learned today:

• The "five minutes off, five minutes on" method is too much.  I prefer the "10 minutes off, stay on a reasonable time" method.
• My daughter can be taught in three hours or less to stop what she's doing and head to the potty once the oven timer goes off.
• The pause function on the TV is a wonderful feature that helps keep a little girl from feeling rushed so she won't miss Abby's Flying Fairy School.
• You cannot leave poop on the floor with Maisy around.  I left it for 10 seconds while I got Mad to the potty, but it was still gone when I returned.  I almost vomited, but I was also kind of grateful I didn't have to clean it up all by myself.
• That little ladybug-shaped egg timer Mad loves?  Having it go off in the bathroom because you're trying to get her to stay on the seat for 2-3 minutes is NOT a good idea.  Causes a certain little girl to somehow jump off the potty with the seat adapter attached to her backside until she lands in your lap.  (So proud of her for getting back up there later!  She keeps saying, "No wadybug in the potty.  It's too woud in the potty.")
• The idea that you can simply dump poop from a diaper into the potty is freaking ridiculous, especially if your daughter pooped and then hopped and scooted all over her bed while not napping .
• Mad can only bend over and touch her toes for so long while Mama cleans that massive poo in the "you're not a baby, so you don't lay down for diaper changes" way.  And when she falls, she's probably going to land her poopy butt right on the hand that cleans her.
• Telling a child three weeks before you actually start a potty training method, "I'll give you a candy when you pee in the potty, two if you poop!" is bribery.  Bribery is bad. 
• There is nothing like the expressions of surprise and pride that come over Mad's face when she uses the potty.  (Maybe bribery is not so bad after all?)
• Mad fully comprehends the difference between wants and needs.  In between successful trips to the potty today she said, "I want... *looks away wistfully*... I need a candy."

It has been a triumphant day.  I've heard this method can work in three days (or that it can take weeks or even months!).  Wish us luck for tomorrow.

My First Day

Although my "day" didn't officially start until Tom left for work this morning, a little background info is in order.


Fynn has been falling asleep between 10:30 and 11:15 most nights, and then sleeping for two to four hours.  Lately she's drifted off progressively earlier.  Last night I put her jammies on right before Mad's bedtime story.  After the story, I brought Fynn here to our room where she pretty much zonked out right away.  I stayed up for about an hour, mainly because I was pumped up on adrenaline in anticipation of today.


Soon after I fell asleep, Fynn woke up.  She and I settled in the recliner.  I promised myself I wouldn't sleep in the chair.  All useless promises aside, I woke up several times with my neck cricked this way or that.  I repeatedly attempted to pop Fynn off my breast and put her back to bed.  I believe this resulted in a cumulative total of about 25 minutes of resting in bed.


Tom's alarm started going off in the wee hours.  He's a big fan of the snooze function and can go almost completely unconscious between alarms.  The last one sounded for at least a full minute before I started calling his name from across the room in the recliner.  I got louder and louder, but... nothing.  I searched around for something to throw at him.  I decided against the water cup and instead selected a cute little denim dress my sister had just brought for the baby on Sunday.  It didn't even hit him, but he jumped up all the same.


Of course he had to brush his teeth with his electronic toothbrush.  It's never been so loud as when I was trying to decide how much longer before I could please put Fynn down and get some real sleep.  Then he needed to shave with his electric razors.  Yes, both of them.  It's probably just as well that I sat there mentally pleading with him to be quiet, turn off the lights and get himself on the freaking road instead of bemoaning the fact that he'd be gone (which I'd already done, trust me).


About the time Tom was finally out the door, Fynn woke up refreshed and hungry.  An hour later, I convinced her to sleep a little longer in her crib(!)... just in time to need to make sure Corey was getting ready for school.  Once he was gone, I stretched out in my bed, closed my eyes and... heard Fynn's hungry sounds.  Like the girl didn't just nurse all night long.  (And no, she shouldn't be going through a growth spurt... we just spent an entire week cluster feeding.)


We nursed for a while before I heard Mad stirring over the monitor.  One thing I was dreading was hearing her call out for Daddy to come get her in the morning.  So I put Fynn down, went in and interrupted Mad's eleventh version of the ABC's.


Fynn spent most of the morning in my Moby wrap. I took the girls for a walk because anything involving my butt on a soft surface would have made staying awake impossible.  I managed to make it through the day, surprisingly only bleary-eyed in the early morning.


Mad went down for her nap a little early, but it was just as Fynn was waking up, so my hopes for sleep weren't looking good.  Maybe 90 minutes after Mad was asleep, so was Fynn.  You've never seen a bed cleared and occupied so quickly in your life!  I think I got at least an hour of uninterrupted sleep.  All at one time!

I had prepped Mad for a couple of things last night.  One, Daddy was going back to work.  (She did ask where he was when we came into my room and didn't look too happy at the answer, but she was fine.)  And two, we were going to be starting potty training today (she and Daddy went out yesterday and bought the rest of the potty seat converters for the restrooms).


She's sat on the potty a few times at Grandma's, but has flipped out quickly each time.  So I told her today we'd be practicing sitting on the potty with her clothes on.  Silly girl!  As soon as I had her up there, she wanted her pants off and diaper removed so she could really sit on the potty.  Over the course of the day, she probably "went to the potty" four or five times.  She never did anything except look really proud and adorable.  She also spent a good part of the day diaper free.  This evening I was surprised to see what looked like a piece of charcoal on the floor.  Just as I realized what it was, Maisy grabbed it and ran off.  Fortunately, Tom was home by then.  He got all the cleanup dooty, buahaha... ahem... I was really glad he was there.  Aside from that, there were no accidents, but there were also no big successes... aside from Mad's willingness to try (which was huge, of course).


All in all, not a bad day.  And now my baby is asleep, so I'm going to see if I can be, too.

How To Potty Train Your... Duck

Grandma got tired of waiting for me to bring down the potty seat we'd gotten for Madelyn (girl has no interest in going near it, so I just haven't bothered).  She and Papa went out and bought a potty seat and a potty chair and asked me to choose on Monday morning when we arrived (uh, let's just skip any unnecessary steps, 'kay?).


Grandma and I walked gleefully into the bathroom together.  Madelyn stayed down the hall, quietly saying, "No" every time we asked if she was coming to see what we were doing.  Then we boisterously discussed how exciting and fun and interesting this was.  Mad-a-Cat came creeping in to see what we were doing.  She watched as we oohed and aahed over the toilet seat, but declined to get on to it.


I suggested she go get Duck.  She raced out and came cautiously back, Duck in tow.  Duck sat on the potty and Mad said, "She peeing."  (Although she can identify "man, woman, boy and girl, everybody is "she," a fact that sometimes gets to Corey.)  Mad got some toilet paper and wiped Duck down before flushing the paper away.  The process was repeated twice (when a duck's gotta go, a duck's gotta go) before I headed off to work.


Margaret said that she got Mad up on the potty right after nap that day, but that nothing happened.  I haven't heard any more about it until yesterday, when I received these photos at work.  They remind me of an instruction manual.


Step 1:  Put Duck on the seat and wait politely while she does her business.

Step 2:  Wipe, but be discreet.

Step 3: Maybe you should pay more attention to the task at hand.  (Notice Duck looking slightly perplexed at this new experience.)

Step 4: No really.  Get in there!

Step 5: Make sure everything is all gone.

 So glad we won't have to buy any more diapers for Duck!

Unnoopaaans

Mad loves books.  One of the best things that happened before she was born is that my coworker asked me what sort of shower I'd like her to throw.  I asked for books.  Heck, by then we'd already had one impromptu shower from a class I work with and one given by a woman's group I am in.  And I knew we were having "the" shower after the baby was born, so I wasn't worried about clothes by then.  Just from that shower, Mad received almost 50 books.  They have just kept coming since then.


These days she has a few favorites.  Two in particular are "Aliens Love Underpants" and "How to Potty Train Your Monster."  (Notice a theme here?  Mama might be working on something.)  At this point, I could recite them to you, but I won't.


Most of our friends either do not have young children or they have children Mad's age or younger.  But one of my friends has a granddaughter who is just enough older than Madelyn that we have recently started receiving hand-me-downs.  I don't know how you feel about it, but since Mad went through about a year where every three to four months she was in a new size, I am thrilled to be getting them.  (And I'm not too disappointed that her growth rate is slowing down.  I think we might make it through winter in 3Ts and 4Ts. *fingers crossed*)


Jaylah's mommy has been sending over all sorts of stuff lately.  Most of it entirely usable; some that has gone to Grandma's house "just in case"; and a few things that have been donated (where, yes, I'm sure they'll toss it... I just can't do it).


One of the things Mad won't be using herself, but which I have kept is a bunch of little panties.  She's getting ready to figure out the putting on and taking off of clothing.  Why not practice... and encourage the use of panties instead of diaper?  Fortunately, most of the panties have been too small anyway.


We got another batch on Tuesday.  In it was one rather large (for Mad) pair of Blue's Clues panties.  I'd washed everything Wednesday night and was in the midst of folding it on my bed yesterday morning when Mad awoke.  We frequently dress her on our bed, even if there's a laundry project in progress.  Needless to say, she found the panties, exclaimed, "Unnoopaaans" and proceeded to work to get them on over her pants.  She needed a little help, but together it was a mission accomplished.


And then we went about our day.  At Grandma's house she proudly lifted her shirt to show off her unnoopaaans.  When Daddy arrived to pick her up, she did the same.


Last night was one of those nights.  She was tired, I was tired and lazy.  I'd taken her up to get ready for bed, already knowing that there would be no bath.  When I opened her pyjama drawer I realized that all the long-legged, long-sleeved ones were in my bedroom... and that the door was locked... and the key was downstairs.  So I did something I might have done one other time in Mad's life: I put her to bed in the same clothes she wore last night.


The downside is she didn't get changed.  The upside is I got this