Letters from Pemberley

This week has turned cold, and Tommy is now in size 3T, with only a few things (mostly pants) stashed from my last rummage sale excursion.  So when kidwinks advertised a huge rummage sale in the ‘burbs, I was there, at 7 am (some folks had been there since 4) to stake out my place before the doors opened at 9:30.   I came home with this:

That’s four pairs of pjs, four pairs of pants, snow pants, 8 long sleeved shirts, a suit, two sweaters and two sweatshirts, two pairs of size 9 LL Bean and Stride Right shoes (poor Tommy has been wearing the 8s from the last rummage sale, but the fancy shoe store measured him this past week at a 9), brand new dress socks (to go with the suit, but they are unfortunately boys size 9, not kids size 9…which I didn’t realized til I got home…so we’ll see if they’ll fit Carver next week), and a Virginia Lee Burton anthology that looks brand new.

It wasn’t the $3 steal of last time–I didn’t have anything to donate or sell for credit, and the items were all priced by the owners because it was kindof a mega consignment set-up, not a true rummage sale fundraiser.  Since I was in the door with the first 20 in line, I picked through the four 3T tables to find items that were around a dollar.  Because who pays $5 for used tshirts when you could get them new at Old Navy for that price?  The suit was a steal at $4, and the snow pants and book were in the $3 range.  All told, I rounded out Tommy’s 3T stash (and started his 4T collection) for $39.75.  Yes, I was able to dress him completely the first year of his life for around $20, but he had a lot of baby shower gifts, and garage sales in South Bend/Granger sell kid’s clothes in the 25 cent range, not the $1-5 range!  I don’t know how people who only buy new can afford to clothe growing children.  Fortunately, I haven’t had to buy anything for Elizabeth yet because my extremely generous neighbor continues to pass down all of her girls’ clothes when Ava outgrows them.  So I think I’m done with my fall/winter shopping (except snow boots and church shoes).  Woo hoo!

Today’s going to be a long day. Both kids have a cold (Elizabeth’s first), so none of us slept well last night. We’re crabbier than usual, and it’s hard to keep up with wiping two runny noses. And Tommy is on his second pair of pants for the day. He went potty all by himself while I was putting his sister down for her nap, but then he dumped the very full bowl all over his pants and the bathroom floor. The next step, of course, was to try to flush his sweat pants down the toilet. I heard the flush but didn’t know what he’d done until I’d wiped up the floor and couldn’t find his pants. Fortunately they didn’t go down all the way, so I’m on load of laundry #1 for the day and he’s in pants #2. I think I’m going to need more chai…

Tommy had his first trip to the dentist yesterday.  (By the way, 5 minutes with a children’s dentist costs $150 around here.  Why didn’t I take Regina’s advice and make sure that Derek had dental insurance before I married him?=))  Now Tommy’s very excited about his new toothbrush, mirror, flosser, and hourglass timer!

Well, we’ve certainly succeeded in making Tommy sensitive to having a wet diaper. He got up at least 5 times after we put him to bed because he told us he was wet and needed to go pee-pee in the potty. Barely wet, and just about a tablespoon’s worth in the potty. Oh well….

One thing that I’m realizing at the end of day two is that I probably needed an intermediate step between diapers and big boy pants. Pull-ups are basically the same as diapers, and when I tried them earlier this week, he didn’t care when they were wet. But when he has even a little accident in these big boy underpants, it leaks out immediately onto the floor. So I did some shopping for cloth training pants tonight. I ordered four different brands, and I’ll update on them when I get them. I think feeling the wetness inside (not absorbing like our bum geniuses) but having a waterproof outside (or at least more than one thin cotton layer) will work better for us until Tommy learns to catch himself before he has his accident. From the website, they still look more like big boy underpants than diapers, so they hopefully won’t undermine the pro-underpants momentum we’ve built up so far. Stay tuned next week for more potty training adventures!

This morning is going pretty well!  Tommy had two accidents with Daddy while I took my mom down to Union Station and did a few errands, but he caught himself the second time and ran to the potty.  He wanted to go out for a run with Derek when I got back, so I made him go before getting dressed and told him he’d get an extra prize if he came back with a dry pull-up.  He did!  This certainly isn’t going to be the day-long process the book promised, but I feel like I can see progress.  I’m not sure what we’re going to do when we pull back from treats every time, but for now, it’s actually not too bad.  This morning, the cheese stick thirds are his treat of choice, and the M&Ms have been sitting there since yesterday. If I can push him towards healthy treats, they can almost sub in for snack time, right?

It’s pretty funny to see the kids interacting with the potty. Tommy loves having Lizzie right there for moral support. She thinks the potty chair is a pretty fun toy.

Well, today is P-Day at the Muller home.  I’m trying to take advantage of my mom’s visit to potty train Tommy!  He’s been using the potty 6-8 times a day, waking up from naps or overnight with a dry diaper (and telling us he needs to go), or telling me immediately after he wets his diaper.  So today we pulled out the big boy underwear for Tommy and his doll Eddie, and we’re spending the day at home so that they can learn to use the potty together.

I read a book about potty training your child in just one day, but it wasn’t all that helpful.  Basically it spent more time telling me how spanking is abusive and leads to a life of criminal misbehavior than actually giving me any advice I didn’t already know.  So I’m kindof winging it, with help from my mom.  We put Tommy and Eddie in  big boy underwear first thing and have been giving them apple juice, milk, melon, and popsicles.  I told him he’d get a reward every time he went on the potty or had dry underpants when I checked.   At first, Tommy was really excited to earn his rewards (watching a Mike Mulligan movie from the library, an M&M, car sticker, or 4 bunny grahams), but he had six accidents in three hours.  And he didn’t seem to care that he was wet.  We started asking him to go every 5 minutes instead of every 10 and bumped up the rewards.  Cheese sticks and craisins entered the mix, and I put them out in muffin cups so he could look at them and select one.  He went two hours without any accidents, and he’s now in a pull-up for his nap.  I’ll post an update this evening with how successful his afternoon was…