Last Saturday morning, Audrey refused to put a diaper on, and I decided to potty train her. I probably shouldn't have done such a snap decision, but I had been considering it for a while and really thought I could flip the switch on her. Over the last 10 days, she's come a LONG ways, and today she only had one accident, which we managed to actually get to the potty in time to catch about 1/3 of it. I'm pretty proud of her! I've had a lot of help, though, since I have been communicating with a potty training expert who wrote a book that's sold through her website http://ohcrappottytraining.com. This lady is amazing - no nonsense, and really informative. It's not just rah-rah, it's really instructive. And encouraging! Audrey seems to be having a hard time with the advance notice part of it; she HAS asked me to go before, but for now she is totally reliant on me to remind her. We're doing pretty well now, though, that I've got a mental schedule down for her, and I have a good idea of when her bladder might be full. Today, while sitting on my lap, she looked up at me with her "I'm gonna go" face (which is adorable, I might add) and grabbed at her backside, so we hustled to the potty and just as she settled in with a book, she pooped!! She's doing great, but it is a LOT OF WORK and it's EXHAUSTING. We've come too far to go back now! I'm NOT SPENDING A YEAR AT THIS like we did with Emily! the diaper service is turning out to be a totally awesome thing, because they will provide training pants instead of diapers until she's totally trained!! YEAH! No more washing poopie undies!!!
I am still trying to figure out her slimy poops, though. I bought some soy milk to substitute for a while, and we'll see if eliminating dairy helps. The real kicker to this is why her slime cleared up when she was at my parents' place for 4 days a couple of weeks ago, and now that she's home, it's back in full force. ?? Emily and I both had some tummy troubles, so I thought maybe it's a bug that lives... in the bathtub? sanitized. Refrigerator? scrubbed clean. Our water supply? it's the only thing I haven't totally checked out. If she doesn't do better off of dairy for a couple of days, I'll try limiting her water to only that purchased in a bottle, and see if then it improves. Because the poor thing just doesn't stand a chance in this condition!
Emily has been doing all kinds or crazy academic gymnastics these days. She loves to rhyme, and she's really got the hang of it. Tonight she was making up words to go with objects around, and then it was all nonsense - but all rhyming! We've been reading Frances books, at least one every day and sometimes I have to cut her off at four! They're long and detailed, and she's started to memorize them. She's got the first 4 pages of "Bedtime for Frances" memorized, including where she sings her little alphabet song, and Emily points at each letter on the page and identifies it. So then after she's on a roll with that, she points to "Father" and "Frances" and we have to talk about how they start with the same letter, and how they sound alike. At the end, the moth goes "BUMP and THUMP" so she matches up the U, M, and P and we talk about how they not only sound alike, they look alike! After talking about the sound that TH makes, she's been working on incorporating that into her speech, so I'm afraid I'll lose her celebratory "I'm FREE" before she actually is done being three! and Fank you, and I Fink, and dis and dat. It's all slipping away.
Travis took Emily to football games both weekends, just the two of them, while Audrey and I practiced potty (have I mentioned this has been an incredible commitment??). Trav was looking for things for Emily to do in the car, and I told him about the rhyming game and how that kills time well, and instead he started counting with her. hold up two fingers on each hand and count - how many do you have? In "Birthday for Frances," she likes to count the bubblegum balls, talking about how four pennies bought four bubble gum balls; Frances eats two, so how many does she have? It's so cute to see those little fingers counting!! Also adorable is seeing them PLAY THE PIANO!! She puts her little thumb on middle C and playes up through G with her pinky - amazing!! Video at the picasa site. The cutest part about that is that she didn't learn that from me or from Grandma, who's actually a piano teacher, but rather from Megan, who just started her own lessons recently, and has the hang of reading a few notes on the page and totally gets how to count beats per measure. Incredible little girls!
So Emily and Travis had fantastic trips to Ames for the football games, and had a great time. It doesn't hurt that Iowa State won both games, especially the one yesterday! yeahhhh!! Emily came home from the night game a week ago, and as she was snuggled up in bed falling asleep, she was telling me all about what she did and what she saw, and I knew that one of the most highly-anticipated things was getting to eat a hot dog for supper. I asked her what she had for supper, and she sat up and said, "I didn't have supper!!" what?? I asked if she was hungry and she said yes!! She was very worried, so I came downstairs and asked Travis about it and he said, Yeah, of course she had a hot dog. I gave Emily some milk, and when she burped afterwards, I could even smell the hot dog breath!! She had not sat down at a table to eat a meal, so it didn't register to her that she had actually eaten something at dinnertime. Funny girl!
I have really gotten to know Audrey as we've spent hours sitting in the bathroom together. A fun game for me is to sing a pitch and she'll sing it back. I'll put socks on her feet and yank on the toes to get them off, and she giggles like crazy. She really likes books, we talk about all kinds of things that we read in there. She's really gotten much faster, though, now that she knows how to do it and I am not guessing as much as to whether she has to go or not. And she is starting to trust me a little, too.
Since I've had so much potty training on my brain lately, it was easy to see, in talking with my sister, that her husband is behaving just exactly like a 37-year-old in diapers. Suddely she (and the court system) won't let him have his way, and he doesn't like it! He knows what he should do, and he's physically capable of appropriate behavior, but he remembers that life was really, really good when somebody else was doing all the work for him. He just wants for things to go back to being easy for him, when he could get his way all the time. In case anybody else out there is helping a loved-one escape an abuser, he's really just a big baby. It's really helping us stay a step ahead of his actions to realize he's just reacting, he's not even capable of plotting, he's just reacting to his selfish desires. Once it's apparent he's just trying to get his way, it's totally possible to outmaneuver him. What a jerk.
Lots of love to all of you. Hope you're enjoying this beautiful weather!
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