Take a good look…
…this is a child who had to have a canned green bean removed from her nose today.
Our potty chair cup runneth over.
My life for the last 4 days has been fixated on bodily functions. Everything swirls around the did-she-or-didn’t-she? question that is always hanging in the back of my head. Internal dialogue: “Has she peed in the last 20 minutes? How much liquid has she drank? What is her demeanor? Is she acting antsy? Why is she being so quiet?” And on and on (and on) it goes.
As I have learned this week, potty training is not one overarching “thing” you do, but rather a series of small modules that create the greater program.
So far, we have encountered:
- peeing during the day
- peeing at night
- pooping during the day
- pooping during the night
- peeing/pooping in a potty other than her own
- being away from the home for extended periods of time
- road trips (shiver)
Each of these is then broken into smaller subcategories such as doing it on her own or being coached.
Like a really bad poker player, Stella has many “tells” that give her away. Learning these tells has been the key to our early successes in this process. Her body language speaks volumes. Whenever she vehemently argues against getting on the potty chair, cries and pitches a fit, it means she REALLY has to go. When you set her on the potty chair and she is antsy and stiffens up she DEFINITELY has to go. When you open the car door to get her out of her carseat and she looks at you and immediately says “My no have to go poop!” you are pretty much guaranteed that – say it with me – SHE REALLY HAS TO GO. It is those times that you ask her if she needs to go potty and she casually responds, “No, not yet” that you can feel pretty confident that she’s telling you the truth. Or those times when she calmly sits there for 15 minutes without releasing a drop, that you know you are wasting your time.
So today, when I went to get her out of the car and she immediately blurts out that she doesn’t have to go poop (knowing full well that she hasn’t gone in over 24 hours), that I bring her in and then plead with her to sit on the potty before taking her nap. The first half hour the air was filled with the desparate, plaintiff cries of “My no have to go poop!” Then, exhausted, I gave up and just had her change into the pull-up and tried putting her down for her nap. 2.2 minutes after closing her bedroom door she emerged proclaiming, “My have to go poop!” So back in the bathroom we go for another hour. My negotiations included everything short of promising her crisp non-sequential bills in a duffel bag, but in the end it all paid off. Somehow, the magical potty fairies came and the skies opened and so did her bowels. All this for poop, people.
More than anything though, we are excited…and proud. She hasn’t peed in her underwear even once since we started (just 4 short days ago), and twice yesterday she made her way in to the bathroom without any prompting at all. This morning, after having her wake up twice in an inexplicably foul mood AND DRY PULL-UP we realized that she has somehow started to hold it, but hasn’t figured out that the uncomfortableness she is feeling is just a full bladder.
I would like to think that from this week on there is no going back. We haven’t used the ‘diaper’ word once since starting this process, and are doing everything within our power to play on Stella’s deeply ingrained sense of routine to make all this work.
Oh, and have I mentioned that we have successfully reduced her bottle consumption down to 2oz per serving?
Kids, pets and pee.
Aside from the fact that we have decided to start this new year by instituting time-outs, banishing all diapers size 5 and up, and rationing water consumption from a bottle (only at sleep time and no more than 4oz), we decided that we needed to really go that extra mile in our new stance on tough love and extend it beyond our child and onto our pets. Why, you might wonder, are they becoming such hard-asses? Well, aside from the regularly discussed issues surrounding the “developmental enhancements” we are nudging along with Stella, there is the fact that in a period of 36 hours last week we found cat spray on the front of the refrigerator, and in two separate places on the kitchen counter. I consider that pretty much a no-brainer.
Although Steve has finally come to the reality of “cats who spray, don’t get to stay,” it has not come easily. I truly admire his compassion and kindness to the animal kingdom and that, along with having to repeatedly play bad-cop with Stella, the decision to banish Rosie like this is just killing him. But rules is rules, and if the greater population of the feline kingdom can live outdoors so can our inflexible, pampered grey cat.
So, Boris now gets to commune with his peeps 24-7 and doesn’t have to worry about informing the whole household of his dominance via urinary measures, and Rosie (who Steve really thinks is behind much of the spraying) is now banished to the outdoors whenever we aren’t here and many times even when we are. The result has been that Boris pretty much gave us the finger entirely and won’t even come around for the occasional snack anymore, and Rosie – well, Rosie has been turned into such a pampered princess by her sugar daddy that she doesn’t quite know how to function when she can’t spend 23.7 hours a day on the couch sleeping. Aside from yowling at the door long enough to actually lose her voice, she managed to get herself stuck under the house today. Not only was I busy trying to negotiate the pre-nap ritual with Stella, but it was pouring rain, and Rosie decide to perform her gutteral cries of a torture victim – right under Stella’s room! So out I went – me and my 7-month pregnant self…in the pouring rain – to free the cat who was single-handedly foiling my one shot at getting Stella down for a nap. Long and ranting story short, I had to dismantle the crawl-space and virtually drag Rosie from under the house while trying to keep the neighbor cat from crawling in, then found Stella wandering the house when I got back. I had to start the whole nap ritual all over again, thereby providing Stella’s 2-year-old bladder with a full 8oz of liquid before sending her off to sleep for 2+ hours. Odds are not good that we are going to continue with our dry streak today.
It just doesn’t get much better.
Where Betty Ford and bodily functions collide.
I don’t want to jinx it, so I won’t say much at this point other than today was Day 1 of Potty Training Boot Camp – kind of a diaper rehab, if you will. Our house was converted to a den of discussions on pee and poop, with treat cups stationed in every room of the house. Every 15 minutes (as determined by the kitchen timer) she was asked to check if she was dry. If she was (with the exception of 1 time she was) she would get one treat. If she successfully filled her potty chair she would get two treats. We only had to send two pairs of her big-girl panties to the laundry room – and that was all before 10am. By the end of the evening she was voluntarily heading to the chair and taking care of business on her own.
Aside from the fact that we were quarantined to the house all day and obsessed with talking about bodily functions, we tried to make it as normal as possible:
And we’re off:
Puzzle time:
Leisure reading
Rewards:
Pedicure:
Greek Burgers
This is another one of those reicpes that I need recorded for easy access, as we WILL be making it again. There are definitely more steps than your typical RayRay recipe, but all the customized condiments are really what make it so much better.
Be sure to pay attention to the ingredient list as many of the items are split for multiple uses.
Adapted from Everyday with Rachel Ray.
Greek Burgers
Yield: 4 burgers
1 Tablespoon olive oil, plus some for drizzling
1 Tablespoon unsalted butter
1 small red onion: 1/2 chopped, 1/2 thinly sliced
3 medium garlic cloves: 1 chopped, 1 crushed
1 10 oz box of frozen chopped spinach
2 teaspoons dried oregano (split for two uses)
1 1/3 lbs of ground turkey or chicken
1/4 lb crumbled feta cheese
1 Tablespoon grill seasoning (i.e. Montreal Steak Seasoning)
1/4 seedless or hothouse cucumber thinly sliced, plus a 2-inch piece peeled and coarsely chopped
1 plum tomato
1 cup coarsely chopped romaine
hot pepper rings or pepperocini, to taste
The juice of 1 lemon, split for 2 uses
Salt/Pepper
4 crusty rolls
1 cup plain yogurt, preferably Greek
2 whole roased red peppers
1/4 cup flat-leaf parsley
10 to 12 pitted Calamata olives
Heat large nonstick skillet over medium-low heat. Add oil and butter. When butter is melted, add onion and the chopped garlic. Cook for 5 minutes. Transfer to a large bowl to cool.
Wring the thawed spinach dry and break up as you add to the bowl of onions and garlic. Season with 1 teaspoon of the oregano. Add chicken, feta and grill seasoning, drizzle with healthy serving of olive oil. Mix together, divide into 4 equal patties. In same frying pan, cook for 5 minutes on each side (we grilled them).
Combine the sliced cucumber and tomato with the sliced red onion, romaine and hot pepper rings. Dress with half of the lemon juice and oil to taste then season with salt and pepper; reserve.
Toast the rolls (can be done while grilling). Place the chopped cucumber in a food processor with the crushed garlic, yogurt, remaining oregano and remainin lemon juice. Add a littel salt and process until smooth. Transfer to a small bowl, rinse out processor bowl for use in next step.
Place the roased red peppers, parsley and olives in the food processor, season with salt and pepper and process to a paste; set aside.
Slather the roll bottoms with the yogurt sauce. Place the cooked burgers on the sauce and top with the salad. Slather the roll tops with red pepper-olive paste and serve.