We are officially a diaper-free household. Tonight is night #2 in the great Commando Sleep Off. Honestly, I’m not worried about it. I can’t remember the last time he woke up wet. It all happened so gradually, I’m wondering if there shouldn’t have been some sort of ceremony or marking of the event.
Saturday night I tried to casually get him into underwear, but he was having none of it. His big blue eyes went all round and shiny, his lower lip pouted out, and he gave me his patented Sniff Sniff little snortle of child dismay. “What, you still want to wear nappies?” I asked. He nodded, slow and solemn. “OK, babe, No problem.” I pulled the last of the Pull-Ups from the closet. “But this is our last nappy, and I’m not going to buy any more. You don’t need them. Do you think you’ll be able to sleep tomorrow night without a nappy?” He smiled and happily climbed into the Dragon Tales-covered kid pants.
Last night, he put on his soccer-ball festooned undies without fuss, and woke up dry this morning. Now it’s my turn to sniff sniff. He’s growing up. Which means, I’m growing old.
Seriously. If you’re having trouble with the potty training thing, just back off. No healthy-kidney’ed kid of 16 is wearing diapers to prom, I can guarantee you that. Our journey to potty training began before the guy’s second birthday, when we moved to a house with all tile floors and an outdoor courtyard with indestructible grass. When the weather was nice, you would find us there in the sunshine, a long teeshirt on the little guy and nothing else. Accidents in the house were easily mopped up, and there was a potty for him in all our bathrooms. That’s all I did, really. He was interested and he learned. We still fight our battles about actually going to the bathroom when he feels a need instead of waiting til it’s too late, but the knowledge that I will make him wear his wet clothes until I can deal with clean ones does tend to scoot him into the bathroom faster than anything else. That, and Target Practice, which my dad thinks is terrific, and has taken it on himself to instigate as often as possible. Rumor has it that Cheerios actually sells a product for just this purpose, but a few regular old Cheerios in the toilet bowl is just as good, really. Another fun thing we did was put blue food coloring into the toilet so he could turn it green. That’s something you can do with girls, too.
Diapering, elimination communication, potty training, Practicalities, Toddler tips
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