Potty Training {Day 1}

 

Well folks…I bit the bullet and started potty training Hudson today!!

I’ve been talking about it for a while & he has been ready…but I haven’t. Mostly because I haven’t had the time to devote to it…but also a little because I haven’t been ready for him to be that grown up!

This is the first (and maybe only for a while) week our calendar has had multiple open days, so I blocked it off quickly and we started really talking up being all done with diapers & going to the potty & wearing big boy undies…and here we are.

Reflections from day one:

* I am using Lora Jensen’s “Potty Training in 3 Days” system. It makes sense to me. It is pretty much what I would do if I just made up my own system, but I find it very helpful & reassuring & confidence boosting to have advice/tips/& a “system” on paper – but that is just the way I am. Obviously I am only one day into it – but so far, so good!

* Today was definitely not as bad as I anticipated. Hudson had way fewer accidents than I expected. Hooray!

* If I had a nickel for every time I said, “Tell Mama if you need to go potty, OK?!” & “Are your undies dry?? YAY!” I would be a wealthy woman

* The worst part (as expected) was the poo accident. Here’s hoping he gets it into the potty tomorrow. Because…ew…worse than diapers for sure.

* Hud slept his usual 2 hours at nap time & made it through totally DRY! AH-mazing! I definitely expected him to have an accident today.

* We shall see how tonight goes…he is usually a really heavy wetter at night…to be continued…

* He can “hold it” much longer than I thought he could

* This is the potty we actually have. It is from IKEA. It is cheap & similar in style to the Bjorn (but WAY cheaper!)

* I found 2T/3T undies at Walmart (I couldn’t find any that small at our Target). Hudson picked out some with “Cars” characters. We have never watched it – but he does love all things “vehicle”. Picking them out was really fun for him.

* He is SO proud of wearing his big boy undies! And his little booty is so cute & pinch-able in them 😉

* I am sure potty training with only one child is easier – but for all you Mama’s out there like me who have babies close together – be encouraged – like everything else we do – it is totally doable & really not so bad! And…it is all I know…which helps 🙂 Naturally, Owen has recently been sick & teething & out of sorts…but such is life. He was pretty happy to just be held while we all played and I ran Hudson back & forth from the bathroom.

* The sweet/hard thing about potty training is that we are joined at the hip 24/7 and ALL of my focus was on him & Owen only. As opposed to the majority of my focus while also multi-tasking around the house/running errands/etc.

It was fun for us (all 3 of us) to have such concentrated time together ALL day 🙂

It was also hard for me to drop all the other things I feel like I “need” to be doing as we play & go about our day and focus on this special time of training. To be extra intentional with the time to better get to know & love on my boys…just being honest.

Sometimes I would rather be doing something besides building another mega-block tower. But…I really, really have been praying the Lord would remind me again that these “little years” are going by so very quickly and soon my big boys will be a grown men and I will long to build one more mega block tower. And He has been oh so faithful to answer that prayer!

So, all in all I say we had a great first day of potty training! Right now it feels a little like “the song that never ends” and I am exhausted just thinking about how tonight and tomorrow could go but I know it WILL end & I’ve got to take it one hour /one trip to the potty/one accident at a time.

His grace is sufficient.

A Kick in the Pants

Since Owen has been sick he has been nursing really frequently. Gone is the 3 hour schedule for now.

And don’t get me wrong. I love breastfeeding.

But it is exhausting when he is eating this often.

And I am selfish.

And I really don’t want to nurse him when we just finished a feeding less than 2 hours ago.

I mean, of course I will. He is hungry & helpless. I love him & desire his good.

But maaaaaaaybe I’ll feel a little internal frustration/”woe is me” while I do.

And maaaaaaaybe while I’m at it, I’ll be short & snippy with my man

And then when I am smack in the middle of my not-so-hypothetical pity party sin {lets call it like it is} I get this big ol’ kick in the bootay.

{found here & here}

It is not to this that Christ’s example calls us.

He did not cultivate self, even His divine self: He took no account of self.

He was not led by His divine impulse out of the world, driven back into the recesses of His own soul to brood morbidly over His own needs, until to gain His own seemed worth all sacrifice to Him.

He was led by His love for others into the world, to forget Himself in the needs of others, to sacrifice self once for all upon the altar of sympathy.

Self-sacrifice brought Christ into the world. And self-sacrifice will lead us, His followers, not away from but into the midst of men.

Wherever men suffer, there will we be to comfort.

Wherever men strive, there will we be to help.

Wherever men fail, there will be we to uplift. Wherever men succeed, there will we be to rejoice.

Self-sacrifice means not indifference to our times and our fellows: it means absorption in them.

It means forgetfulness of self in others.

It means entering into every man’s hopes and fears, longings and despairs: it means manysidedness of spirit, multiform activity, multiplicity of sympathies.

It means richness of development.

It means not that we should live one life, but a thousand lives,—binding ourselves to a thousand souls by the filaments of so loving a sympathy that their lives become ours.

It means that all the experiences of men shall smite our souls and shall beat and batter these stubborn hearts of ours into fitness for their heavenly home.

It is, after all, then, the path to the highest possible development, by which alone we can be made truly men. Not that we shall undertake it with this end in view. This were to dry up its springs at their source. We cannot be self-consciously self-forgetful, selfishly unselfish.

Only, when we humbly walk this path, seeking truly in it not our own things but those of others, we shall find the promise true, that he who loses his life shall find it.

Only, when, like Christ, and in loving obedience to His call and example, we take no account of ourselves, but freely give ourselves to others, we shall find, each in his measure, the saying true of himself also: “Wherefore also God hath highly exalted him.”

The path of self-sacrifice is the path to glory.”

~ B. B. Warfield

Amen & amen.

How thankful I am for the Spirit that brings conviction.