Well, potty “learned” is bad grammer and it is not crunchy-parenting PC to say “trained.”
I am currently working out the details for inviting people to a workshop to learn how to do what I did- early potty for thier current or will-be 12-18 month-old set. And I’m still working on the blog tutorial. Why early potty? Well, mostly to avoid the 2’s power struggle, and of course to save on diaper money and save the planet.
As of now, Iris has gone three nights dry until 5am when she wakes me to pee. She does this differently from her other wakings by sitting straight up and saying “uh-oh”, grabbing her large cloth-diapered trunk, or saying “tee” (For potty) or signing it with her hand.
She also has begun to communicate with me in all of those ways during the day and I am astonished that we find ourselves at the point where she knows how to hold it and tell me beforehand with plenty of time to get the the pot. This means I have to give her “Opeepoonities” in the bathroom less frequently. This is nice and it makes me look less nuts, a less potty-learning obsessed mommy.
Our holy grail for her is still walking, for so many reasons. So I be sure her left leg works correctly after all, to get her more mobile so she can have more fun exploring, and of course, to make it so that she can run to the potty on her own. That will bring us to 95percent potty-savvy and we should leave that extra five percent alone, because she should be expected to have the occasional accident for a couple more years.
And today, the decided she is no longer willing to wear diapers. Not just “don’t put one on me, you can’t catch me,” but an all-out “No, I do not wear diapers, I wear big girl panties.” Well, in baby speak it sounded like, “No. No pipe. Gul tees.”
In other news, this was week two of French class at Sponge for Iris. Fortunately, she likes it as much as I do. Last week they gave her gateau poisson (goldfish crackers which is not part of our normal dairy-free life) and I gave in and she loved the supersaltyness. So she was terribly dissapointed to to be served Cheerios instead today. She had cheerios because I wouldn’t let her have the cookies (also, being called gateau) which were the other option. She gave me the sign for fish and then just looked down at the table, eventually giving in and eating them, while watching the other kid eat the cookies.
At the end of class, she spotted some leftover cookies and said plainly to the teacher, “Gateau?” They had milk and sugar. I just couldn’t do it. I gave her a smoothie instead. Looking back, that was a bad parenting moment, I should have rewarded her with a cookie of any sort. Does anyone have a good home-made tiny cookie recipe sans cane sugar and dairy?