Athene Numphe

A few weeks ago Little Prince moved up to the next room at his daycare. The big change for this room is that they actively work to potty train the children in the classroom. Little Prince has been using the potty on-and-off since he was about 18 months old, but nothing has been super consistent. Sometimes he’s great at it and sometimes he was afraid of it and sometime he absolutely refused to sit on it. Honestly, we haven’t really been that consistent with him either. Partly because we hadn’t made the mental effort and partly (for me at least) because I wanted to wait until after our Mardi Gras trip before we did a big push. Since we got back we’ve been working on it more, but LP still doesn’t usually ask to go. It’s more of us putting him on the toilet. And the only time he’s pooped in the toilet was when I caught him mid-poop and got him on there. Still, he was really excited about that.

The other week we got the official “your child is ready to potty train” letter. In talking to his teacher, she said that he was really smart, and probably could get it quickly, so she recommended the cold turkey to underpants method. I’d been promising LP that he could have Batman underpants when he learned to use the potty. So we went ahead and ordered one package of Justice League underpants and one pack of just Batman underpants. They came in last week. We waited until this weekend to start. All last week we let him know that he’d be in underpants over the weekend.

I present to you Little Prince in his very first pair of underpants ever: Batman!

He was super excited to be in “big boy” underpants all day. On Saturday we only had one “oopsie.” It was in the afternoon and he’d refused to go sit on the potty a little while before and we didn’t push it. He was running to the door to greet V and E who came over for a playdate when it happened. I’m pretty sure we would have had a poop oopsie in the early morning, but he’d asked to keep his ‘jamas on through breakfast and so we didn’t actually put him in his underwear until after breakfast and he’d already pooped by then. On Sunday we didn’t have any pee oopsies. We did have a poop oopsie in the late afternoon. He was playing by himself and I was downstairs with my mom when Darius caught him doing his “I want to be alone” poop behavior. By the time we got to him, he’d already gone. Oops.

He went to daycare today in underpants. He’s definitely my child because as soon as he walked into the classroom he wanted to pull off his pants to show his Batman underpants to all of his friends and his teachers. We’ll see how he does today.

It seems like the biggest obstacle we have to overcome is to get him to recognize when he has to go and tell us before it happens, not afterwards. We’re working on it. Lately as soon as he pees he says, “See I told you I had to go” which is totally the opposite of what actually happened. We’ll get there.

My only sadness is that we’ll never get to put him in his Kickstarter diaper from Seams Geeky, as we haven’t gotten it yet. Oh well, we knew that might be a possibility when we funded them. Now to figure out the best way to prep prefolds, covers, and pocket diapers for storage and to figure out what we want to do with the changing table in his room.

Originally published at my Little Prince blog. Please leave any comments there.

I keep wanting to write a “Little Prince is two and here’s everything he’s doing” post, but he’s doing so much and keeping us so busy, that I don’t have the time. For the record, at his two year check in, he weighed in at 21.8 lbs and was 31.75″ tall. Both numbers are in the single percentiles, but he’s still growing, following his chart, and blowing the major milestones out of the water.

 Ok, now that that’s out of the way I can write about our last weekend.

On Saturday we got up late. We were going to go out to the splash pad, but we got moving so late that it wouldn’t have been worth it. So we go our grocery shopping done early instead. Then we came home, ate lunch and went down for a nap. I fell asleep with Little Prince for the first hour or so. Then he woke me up to switch sides. He fell back asleep nursing and then popped off still asleep after half an hour and stayed asleep for over an hour more. He slept a good 2½ hours, which is unusual because his normal weekend naps are about an hour and a half (maybe two if we are lucky).

When he got up, we headed out to his friend from daycare’s birthday party. It was at Inflatable Wonderland at the Mall. We’d never been there before but it was basically a big room with tons of bounce houses. Little Prince took to it like he was born to jump (he’s really into jumping on everything these days). He went right into a bounce area that was supposedly for “bigger kids.” All the other parents were like, “my kid is afraid to go in” and we had to say “well, this is his third time around these things so he gets them now.” He had a total blast at the party, he even got some of the older kids to help him climb up the ladders so he could go down the big bouncy slides. The only things he didn’t like was when the music was too loud and the shark head at the beginning of the Finding Nemo bouncescape.

Here he is with his friends B and A. They are not even related, but they look so much alike that after two years of seeing them I still have trouble telling them apart sometimes.

It was really great to chat with the other parents of LPs friends. Most of these kids have been together since they were really little (some since they were all about three months old), so they know each other so well that it’s great to see them play. And it’s nice to talk to their parents too. So I started an online group for us so we can post about playdates and stuff. Yay for connecting. Also I know that LP is very verbally advanced, but after seeing him with his peers, yeah…wow. Even some of the other parents commented on how smart LP is.

After the party was over, we got mall food (cause it was getting late) and headed home.

This morning we got moving somewhat faster and we did make it out to the awesome Splash Pad where we had a great time.

 We remembered a ball and cups this time and Little Prince got right under the water without any hesitation. After about an hour in the water he wanted to go to the swings at the playground that’s right there. So we snacked a bit and headed over.

We grabbed food on our way home, ate, and showered. Then it seemed like LP was about to nap, but he nursed for a bit and then wanted to go downstairs. Then Ms. G and Mr. D showed up for a visit. He was so excited to show off. So guess who, after napping so well yesterday, didn’t nap at all today? But we had some downtime after our guests left by watching Wreck-It Ralph as a family. Then we played for a bit, FaceTime’d with Grandma R, and had dinner.

After dinner we played outside with the neighbors and I got to see our newest neighbor who was only 4 days old! So cute! Then inside for quick bath and after that we had meltdown I-didn’t-nap toddler time, so we skipped teeth brushing, went straight to nursing and LP fell asleep super quickly, which gave Darius and I a little bit of extra hangout time.

I should also mention that LP peed in the potty quite a few times over the weekend and has started asking for diaper changes more often. So we’re moving in the right direction, but nice and slowly, at his own pace.

Originally published at my baby blog. Please leave any comments there.