Friday, April 30, 2010

The beauty of bribery

So we aren't really working too hard on potty training at our house. We're just kind of letting Evie direct things for now. (What she doesn't know is that I have a week off in one month's time where I plan to concentrate on potty training.) More often than not, when Evie tells us that she wants to go potty, she really just wants to be naked. On Wednesday, Evie was dressed, but had no diaper on. When Justin was in the bathroom, Evie came in and spontaneously went pee-pee on the potty.

Tonight after dinner, Evie was asking for chocolate. I told her that if she went pee-pee on the potty, I would give her some chocolate. She told me "okay" and headed to the bathroom. She came back out and we explained that she actually had to make pee-pee in the potty to get the chocolate. She said, "Okay, I'll be right ba-aaaack!" and sure as I have 10 toes on my feet, she went pee-pee!

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

The Joy of Parenthood

Last night, I had one of those experiences as a parent where I wasn't sure what to do next.

Some background: when we tuck Evie in to bed at night, we do a diaper change, put on pajamas, take medicine, brush teeth, read two stories, look out the windows of the loft and tell the neighbors, trees, flowers, birds, cars, mailboxes, sun and moon "goodnight" and then we "rumpus" to her bedroom. (One of Evie's favorite books is Where the Wild Things Are and there's a part in there where Max says, "Let the wild rumpus begin!" and we have a rumpus as we turn the pages. I'm sure if you ever overhear us, you would think we were crazy.) We tuck her into bed, give and get hugs and kisses, and leave. When she started sleeping in her big girl bed, we started leaving a light on for her so the room wasn't so scary. I typically slip into her bedroom when Justin and I go up to bed (around 10ish) and turn the light off. I love seeing her sleeping peacefully in her bed.

Lately, Evie has been expressing interest in going pee-pee in the potty--often as an excuse to strip down and have some naked time. We're okay with naked time and we let her run around in the buff many evenings. When we tucked Evie into bed last night she told me she wanted a diaper change. I checked and she was dry and told her it was night-night time. We got hugs and kisses and left her room. Justin and I then went outside to wrap towels around my rose bushes to protect them from the frost, came back inside to clean up and put laundry away. All was quiet over the monitor, so before Justin and I headed down to the basement to watch TV, I went to slip into Evie's room to turn out the light. It was probably around 8:45 p.m.

I opened her door and what I saw before me almost made me laugh out loud. I called out in my best loud, urgent whisper, "Justin, come here!" He took a peek and I sent him downstairs for the camera. Just inside the door to Evie's room, she has a potty chair. At the base of the potty chair last night were her shucked pajamas (top and bottom) and diaper. One of the drawers of her dresser was open and disheveled. In her bed asleep, buck naked, was my daughter. She was curled up with a new pair of pajamas and a clean, still folded diaper.

Ah, parenthood. I hesitated to do anything for a moment because I didn't want to wake her up, but I knew she needed to be wearing a diaper. I unfolded the diaper and rolled her onto it. She woke up enough to tell me, "I went pee-pee potty mommy." I slipped her into the pair of pajamas she had picked out, kissed her and covered her up. Then, I turned off her light and counted my blessings that it wasn't already 10 o'clock--which probably would have meant changing the sheets, not just adding a diaper and jammies.

I hope this puts a smile on your faces.