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Yesterday was the second day of our second attempt at potty training Lily.  Already a much bigger success than our first attempt since that only lasted one morning.  The day started off much the same as day one.  Lily sat on the toilet first thing in the morning with no success, was put into panties and continued with her morning.  Shortly after a second failed attempt at peeing on the potty Lily had two consecutive accidents maybe only 10 minutes apart.  Unlike day one, however, I found that these first two accidents frustrated me greatly, mostly because moments before the first accident I specifically asked her if she needed to use the potty, she said no and proceeded to go into her room to pee on the floor.  After the second accident, I explained to Lily my frustrations, took a deep breath and tried to carry on in a positive way.  From that point on she was accident-free until about 1pm.  At was at this point that she was supposed to be napping but instead was pooping in her bed.  I quickly cleaned her up, sat her on the toilet where she did finish her poop, and then put her back into bed and sternly reminded her that it was time for a nap.  She asked to sit on the potty one more time in an attempt to avoid her nap, she did nothing when she sat on the toilet, but shortly after she did fall asleep.  She slept for somewhere between one and two hours – with no accidents!  I should also mention that prior to this day, Lily would not allow herself to pee on the toilet if she needed to poop, but she did successfully pee on the toilet twice prior to her accident in bed.  So, although I was a little disappointed that she did not poop on the toilet, it was a huge step in the right direction for her.

After her nap, I had to wake her up because I work on Tuesday nights in Dartmouth.  She got up, I took her in the bathroom and told her she needed to sit on the potty.  She had a melt-down!  She cried and told me that she couldn’t pee on the potty.  She climbed onto my lap and we cuddled for a moment, then I told her it was time and she could either climb on the potty herself or I would have to put her there.  She stood up to take her panties off and cried.  I finally got her to climb up on the toilet and she cried some more.  We hugged for a minute while she was on the toilet, I asked her if she wanted books or songs, she said no to every option.  Then I took my phone out of my pocket and started showing her the pictures on my phone.  This made her stop crying – apparently she’s a little vain as the majority of the photos are of her.  Once she stopped crying she was able to pee immediately.  Since we were going to be in the car for at least half an hour, I asked her if we could switch to diapers.  She wasn’t interested.  So, I offered to let her keep her panties on if I could put the diaper over the panties, she agreed.  So, that was essentially the end of day two, a little earlier than the end of day one, but we ended on a high note!

So, yesterday was the first day of our second attempt at potty training.  My expectations were low after the first go around, I anticipated many accidents in the morning and back to diapers by lunch.  I was trying to keep positive about the accidents and trying to let Lily know that because she was still learning it was perfectly okay to have accidents and to go back to diapers after a short time.  Lily surprised me!

She put her first pair of big girl panties on at 7:40 in the morning.  By 9:30 she had already had two small accidents quite close together, I began to worry that there would be no success on day one, but tried to keep positive.  We talked about how accidents happen sometimes and how we have to listen to our bodies and use the toilet when we need to pee.  For her birthday, Lily got a book called “Elmo’s Potty Book.”  On the first page Elmo tells the readers that the best part about learning to use the potty is getting to wear big kid underwear.  So, for most of the day yesterday, Lily was talking about how she was a big kid wearing her big girl panties.  After her second accident, Lily had four successful trips to the potty with no accidents in between; she even left the lunch table to have a pee before she was finished eating!  After lunch she sat on the toilet again with no success, I did not expect another pee because she had just gone, however, I was worried that if she didn’t try she might have an accident in her bed.  So, she went off to bed.  This is where MY stress began.  She decided not to sleep, but even if she does not sleep she is expected to stay in bed and rest, and ultimately try to have a snooze.  This resulted in two more accidents.  Each time I asked her if she wanted to go back to diapers assuring her that we could give the big girl panties another try the next day.  Each time, she chose the big girl panties without hesitation.  When I finally let her get up, she went another couple hours accident-free!  Just before 6pm she had another accident, this is when I finally put a diaper on her, no choice, to avoid the frustration and stress I could feel brewing.  All in all, a successful first day, she had 5 accidents but she also had 6 successful trips to the potty!  We switched back to diapers just in time so that both Momma and Lily could feel great about how the day went!

As most people reading this will already know, I am expecting an addition to our family in August.  We had the same difficulties conceiving this time around that we did the first time.  Once we had gotten pregnant with Lily everyone kept telling us how much easier it would be to get pregnant the second time because my body would be better prepared for what it needed to do.  So, by the time Lily was one year old and we still hadn’t conceived I began worrying again that there must be something wrong with me, that it was a fluke we got pregnant the first time and I would eventually have to figure out how to explain to my wonderful daughter why she was an only child.  So, when I took the test and it was positive I was extremely excited!

Lily is not entirely aware of what is going on.  But, we are trying to keep her a part of all of it as much as possible.  We try to get her to listen to the baby’s heartbeat once in a while, but she’s not overly interested.  I take her with me for all my check-ups, I tell her when we are leaving that we have to go to the doctor so that the doctor can check on the baby, she always expects that we will be bringing a baby home from these appointments.  When we do these things she always seems quite excited for the new addition.  When I explain to her that I am putting some toys and clothes in the basement for when the new baby comes, that those things will then be the new baby’s things, she is not so happy about the whole thing.  She is also rather jealous of anyone with her Momma.  There was one day that I was petting the dog and Lily pushed the dog away and told her, “No, that’s MY Momma!”  I gently explained to her that I am also the dog’s Momma and that when the new baby arrives I will also be the new baby’s Momma.  Her response?  “NO!”  Not entirely surprising from a two year old, but a little sad for the expecting Momma.

We have been very disappointed to find that she is not allowed to go to the ultrasound appointments.  That would be an amazing way to get her involved in what is going on and to help her understand better what is happening in our lives.  It is also disappointing to discover that they do not offer any prenatal classes for families, to prepare children for siblings.  We have gotten her some baby dolls and some accessories to help her care for her babies in order to try to prepare her for what is coming.  As it gets closer, I will borrow some books from the library to hopefully help with the transition as well.

As for myself, I am also having some of my own issues.  After having a c-section with Lily I am concerned that I will end up having another c-section this time around.  I have figured out my “plan.”  Which is not so much a plan as it is a list of things I learned from the first go around.  For instance, I learned that there are no circumstances that would convince me to ever allow them to stick an epidural in my back again, that was by far the worst experience from Lily’s birth and I refuse to go through it again.  I also learned that although, yes, the child will come when it is ready, it may be TOO late for me, so I will not allow my pregnancy to drag on quite as long as I did the last time.  Most importantly, though, I learned that I will have to go with the flow and take whatever is thrown at me, whether it be a c-section, a monitor screwed into the top of my baby’s head or whatever, I have to take it and try not to let my hormones get the best of me.  I am looking so forward to welcoming this new life into our family, I hope that it will enter the world a little more smoothly than the first, but that it will be an equal joy!

So, as I said in an earlier post, Lily has been peeing on the potty for quite a while.  At the end of the Christmas holidays we decided to give potty training a try, we will call that Potty Training 1.0.  Version 1.0 did not go so well.  The idea was that we would put Lily into her big girl panties and she would have accidents until she learned to tell us that she needed the potty.  I was also trying to keep on her to get her to sit on the toilet every hour or so.  After the first hour, she was dry, I took her up to the potty, she had a pee, life was good.  After about 30 minutes more, she had her first accident.  No big deal, accidents happen.  Took her up to sit on the potty, get cleaned up and put on some dry panties.  Brought her back downstairs and about 10 minutes later she had another accident.  The morning continued like this through about 6 pairs of panties until we finally felt too stressed out to make it work for her.  We put her back into a diaper and that was the end of it.

Since our attempt at Potty Training 1.0 Lily has been consistently peeing on the potty before her nap and waking up from her nap dry.  But at any other time of the day if asked to use the potty she refuses.  She has even been known to tell us when she is peeing on the couch, or in her bed, etc.  One day she even told us, “I love peeing in my diaper!”  This was not a happy moment for me, a little funny, but not happy.  So, this is where my thoughts on Potty Training 2.0 came from.  I started thinking about why version 1.0 didn’t work for us.  We started feeling stressed out and that just made the whole experience worse for everyone.  So, for version 2.0 I have decided to ween her off diapers.  On day 1 she will wear panties for a couple hours, on day 2 we will try to keep her in panties until after her nap, on day 3 we will try to keep her in panties until Daddy gets home from work or just before, on day 4 we will try to keep her in panties until bed time, and we will stick with panties until bed time until she starts to wake up in the mornings dry.

I am going to try to follow her lead.  If she seems to be stressing out about the accidents I will put her in a diaper sooner, if she is doing really well in her panties I will keep her in panties a little longer.  Mostly, I am going to try for the most stress-free training I can manage.  Hopefully, the couple of months that we have waited between version 1.0 and version 2.0 will help with how well she copes with it as well.

Today is day 1 of version 2.0.  At the end of each day I will write a new post about how the day went and how I intend to proceed the next day.

So, Lily is a big toddler, and in all honesty, she has been for quite a long time.  I was very hesitant in moving her from her crib to her toddler bed.  I didn’t like the idea that she could just get out of bed and get into something that she shouldn’t while we were sleeping.  I also worried that she wouldn’t stay in bed to go to sleep.  But, as she got bigger, I realized it was only a matter of time before we are woken up in the middle of the night by a loud thump of her climbing over the side of the crib and landing on the floor.  So, with that in mind, I took the front off her crib and turned it into a daybed.  Lily was thrilled!

She spent the morning climbing in and out of bed.  She covered herself up and pretended to sleep, grabbed stuffed animals and tucked them into bed.  She even laid in bed under the covers while I sat beside the bed and read her stories.  She was in love with this new bed!  And, her butterfly pillow.  I purchased a butterfly pillow before we changed her bed to give her something to look forward to when the change came.  I wasn’t entirely sure how she would feel about the change, the big girl bed also meant some of her baby things had to go.  For instance, she no longer gets bottles, ever, she used to get bottles at bed time every night, but being a big girl means time to say ‘bye-bye to the bottles.’  She also had to give up her Ocean Wonders aquarium for in the crib.  I could have left it there, but the batteries die so quickly and she couldn’t sleep without it.  So, I decided to take this chance to trade the aquarium for her frog Slumber Buddy.  Took a little convincing, but once the aquarium was out of her room she stopped looking for it.

Nap time the first day was fabulous!  This made me very hopeful for bedtime.  I had been worried that she would just keep getting out of bed, as I said earlier, but also that she might just roll out of bed.  Well, at bed time, she went down pretty well, but she didn’t manage to stay in bed, she fell out of bed at least once a night for the first week and a half or so.  Then, I found some small pillows I had made years ago and put them under her fitted sheet to give her an obstacle to hopefully keep her in bed.  For the most part she doesn’t fall out of bed anymore, but once in a while she still ends up on the floor somehow.

I love the new toddler bed, though!  At nap time now, she has a harder time staying in bed, but after a couple times being told to go to bed she stays and falls asleep.  We have to leave her door open now, which we never did before.  So now, if she wakes up before she is ready she stays in bed a cries, but if she is ready to be awake, she climbs out of bed, goes out the door, walks down the hall, opens our door, says, ‘Hi, Mommy’ and then climbs up into bed with us.  So we get a little cuddle time in the mornings, she comes up gives us some hugs and kisses and chats with us for a bit.  So, now I no longer have to jump out of bed as soon as she wakes up and be up for the day, now I can take a few minutes and cuddle with my favourite little turkey and get up when I’m ready!  It’s such a wonderful way to wake up in the morning!

We recently decided that we needed to start teaching Lily to say ‘Please’ and ‘Thank You.’  It started in the car on the way up to Ontario.  She kept asking for snacks and more snacks, so we started saying what she was asking for and adding ‘Please’ to the end.  It didn’t take long for her to start adding the ‘Please’ all on her own.  So we started saying ‘Thank You’ when we handed her what she asked for.  She would repeat us every time.  Once she started using ‘Thank You’ on her own, Scott says, ‘Mommy, did you say ‘You’re Welcome’?’  Which I hadn’t because I didn’t want her to think that was something I was expecting her to say.  But, since he asked, I said, ‘You’re Welcome’ the next time she said, ‘Thank You.’  She responded, ‘I Welcome.’  Now, whenever she says ‘Thank You’ it is immediately followed by, ‘I Welcome.’  Sometimes the ‘I Welcome’ stands alone.  I think it is SUPER cute, but I have no idea how I am going to explain to her that she is only supposed to say the ‘Thank You’ part and that she is supposed to say ‘You’re Welcome’ when someone says ‘Thank You’ to her.

On another note about manners, Lily seems to have learned to say ‘Excuse Me’ when trying to pass someone simply from watching other people do it.  It makes me a very proud Momma to hear my baby girl using her good manners all by herself!

Okay, I have been away from this for a while.  It is September, with vacations in August and starting up a new dance year this month as well as beginning to babysit for a couple days a week, I have been trying to get myself back into the groove.  Not quite there yet, but I don’t think I’m too far now.  So, that being said, there are a few posts I plan on writing in the very near future!  I think I will write about this summer’s vacations in this post.

So, family vacation number one was our annual trip to Magic Mountain.  It started a little different this year, Lily and I went to Maine with my parents, one of my sisters and her daughter.  Mostly a shopping trip, which is always awesome, but we also took the girls to York’s Wild Kingdom.  For how long the drive was, and how much time we spent in the car and at the stores while we were there, Lily did great!  She had a wonderful time at the zoo, they had a lot of rides that she could go on with just her and her cousin, and they had animals, and she loves animals!  She also got to feed the ducks, and ducks are one of her favourite things, she probably would have hung out feeding the ducks all day if that had been an option!  We were only in Maine for three nights, then we traveled to Moncton to meet the rest of the family.

We were in Moncton for three nights as well.  We got there on my nephew’s birthday which also happens to be my wedding anniversary, so we all went to dinner for birthday celebrations!  Then, the next day we all went to Crystal Palace.  Lily had a lot more fun this year, I think, because she was really into going on rides, she didn’t want to stop.  Then, we went to Magic Mountain which is always a hit.  Lily was able to go on some of the kiddie water slides, she had a blast!  She loves being in the water.

The second family vacation this year was up to Ontario to visit Grammie and Grob (this is how Lily says Grampa Rob, and it seems to have stuck).  On the way up, Lily had her first ever camping experience and Momma didn’t get a picture…silly Momma.  We drove for as long as Scott felt comfortable, which was just inside Ontario, the first night.  We left Halifax around 3 in the afternoon, so that’s quite a feat.  We stopped at the first rest stop inside Ontario and put a tent up, a two-man tent, for myself, Scott, Lily and Sasha (the dog, in case you don’t know).  It was…cozy.  Not the best sleep I’ve ever had, but it was a sleep, and Lily did very well once she let herself fall asleep, she was very excited to be in a tent.

While in Ontario we went to Chuck E Cheese’s, Marineland and Toronto Island’s Centreville Amusement Park.  I think Lily would have been content to have gone to Chuck E Cheese’s everyday, but my personal favourite was Centreville.  Lily did enjoy watching the dolphins at Marineland.  She got to go on rides at all three places, she had a great vacation.  We also went to three dog parks while we were there, Sibbald’s Point Park, the Bark Park and a river.

All fairly close to Grammie’s house, but it was a lot of fun.  Lily loved Sibbald’s Point, and the river.  She went swimming at both places. She was a little nervous of all the dogs at the Bark Park which was surprising because she wanted to pet every other dog she met on our vacation.  It was a vacation filled with short naps and a lot of excitement, but she did great!  We left on the Sunday of Labour Day weekend and made it home by 8:00 Monday morning, we drove all night.  Night was mostly through New Brunswick, so not many lights, Lily slept from before New Brunswick straight through to the tolls in Nova Scotia.  It was pretty good.  I got a good 4 hours in there, too.  It was a rough week after that, though.

 

6 months late, but Lily’s first birthday party went off without a hitch.  We didn’t have as many people as we had expected to get in February due to it being summer vacation time, but Lily didn’t mind.  She had lots of little people to play with.  The older kids were very helpful with her, helping her get things and helping her climb up and whatever else she may have needed help with, while the younger children were more interested in her toys giving her a chance to interact a bit with children closer to her own age.  Thanks to her Nana she had a lovely chocolate Minnie Mouse cake which she took one bite of and was finished.  Thanks to her Auntie Ba we had a bouncy castle in the front yard for the kids to jump in, they all had a blast even though it got pretty crowded.  Thanks to her Daddy we had a bonfire in the backyard after dinner and roasted hot dogs and marshmallows while the children ran around.  All in all, a great time!

So, this weekend, Scott and I went to a hotel for one night and left Lily with her Nana and Gump.  We took her out to my parents’ place right after lunch so she would sleep in the car and then have some play time with us before we had to leave.  She woke up just before we arrived and was pretty groggy for the first little while – she didn’t really want anything to do with her Nana or her Gump.  But, we found her some blocks and she found some crayons and she warmed up to them pretty quickly.  When Scott and I finally decided it was time to leave, she was not a happy camper.  She didn’t cry A LOT, she just had this look on her face like we had broken her heart.  I teared up a bit as we left.

When we got to the hotel the first thing I did was go up to the room and call my parents to see how she was doing.  They told me that they had taken her for a walk, she was waving at all the cars that went by, she got to pet a puppy, and she even asked to be picked up.  She was playing happily, didn’t really care that I was on the phone.  So, Scott and I went to the pool.  We walked into the pool where there were a couple of families in swimming.  One of the families had a little girl who was not much older than Lily.  It made me miss her even more!  They were playing with her in the same way that we play with Lily when we take her to the pool.  But then, Scott and I started throwing a beach ball around and having some fun.  Then we went back up to the room to shower before our dinner.

We went to the fancy restaurant in the hotel.  It was lovely.  I felt SOOOOOO out of place.  They kept bringing us small little palette cleansers between the courses.  It was really nice, but so not us!  The food was DELICIOUS!  And it looked nice, too.  After dinner, I called again to see how Lily did with bed time.  Dad told me that she fussed a bit, but they just read her a couple more books and she went right back to sleep.  It made me feel much better knowing that she went to sleep okay without her regular routine – some parts of her routine just can’t go with her. Then we went to a movie, a late movie, because we could!  We went to see Pacific Rim.  It made me think about Lily because *spoiler alert* one of the main characters flashes back to her childhood and the fear on her face is unbearable.  All I could think was, ‘I never want Lily to ever feel like that!’  But, what can I do?  I will never be able to protect her from EVERYTHING!  That thought was the worst of all, knowing that there are SOOOOOO many things that I can’t protect her from and that one day something beyond my control could make her feel just like that!  But, I sucked it up and watched the whole movie, tried to push those thoughts out of my mind.

After the movie, it was after 11pm, I rarely stay up that late, let alone am out that late.  But, we had a nice leisurely walk back to the hotel.  We got back and watched some tv, which was exciting all in itself because we don’t have cable, so we got to watch commercials, and random shows that we would never otherwise watch.  Then we went to sleep, and in the morning, I woke up, to no screaming!  It was so peaceful.  It WAS 7:30am, but it was peaceful, I was able to just lay in bed and not have to run after Lily or try to keep her out of the room or try to make her breakfast while she throws a tantrum over wanting a bottle and not a cup.  We went for lunch and I went back to the pool, also very peaceful, not many people in the pool in the morning.  Then we slowly got showered and ready to go while we watched some tv and we left a little early because we both missed our little girl!

When we got to my parents’ house they weren’t home.  We waited for them to come back after they ate lunch.  Lily was asleep when they got back, we laid her in the bed (not the play pen) and she slept for at least an hour, and would have slept for more, I am sure.  She got up, still half asleep and cuddled with me for a bit, which was nice.  Then as she woke up she got to playing and eating and all the other things she loves to do.  We had some supper with Nana and Gump, Lily had corn on the cob cut off the cob for the first time.  After supper we stayed for just a little while longer, then when we told Lily it was time to go she did not want to leave.  When we did finally get her out the door, I asked Scott to move the car so I could get her into the car easier, she started freaking out when he got in the car and started driving.  It made me sad, but happy that she did, in fact, want to go home.

Lily’s current favourite activity is building with her blocks.  Anytime that she is not eating, sleeping or out and about with Momma she is playing with blocks.  When she first started building with blocks she would just keep building up the single blocks.  It would get so high and then when she put the block on top it would break which was a little frustrating for her.  Now she uses a larger block as a base and makes sure that all the bumps are covered as she goes.  She builds up one tower, then when she doesn’t have any small blocks left she slowly breaks it down by building a new one.  It’s really interesting to watch!

Very focused on her work!

Taking blocks from one tower to make a new tower!