The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Well we've had quite the week around here. First off, C is not only on still on the potty training path, I'm almost getting bold enough to state that he is indeed potty trained. I don't know why the potty gods decided to smile down on me but I am eternally grateful and will remember not to curse them when potty training S...whenever that happens. It's been 2 weeks exactly since my little man sat up in bed and announced that he had to go potty. That was his last day of diapers. The past 4 days have seen not a single accident AND he either tells me when he has to go or he answers me honestly when I ask him if he has to go AND yes, he's pooping like a pro on the potty. I get it that for those who have no kids, this is T.M.I. Tough. It's a huge thing for the mama so yes, I wrote about poop:).

On the flip side, night weaning has not been going well. In fact, it's been sheer disaster over the past week. Not only were we back to 5-6 hours of nursing straight, he would scream. SCREAM when I would take him off or dare to tell him that "mimi's are nigh-nigh". But, in true C style, a great story has come out of it:

He awoke one night this week asking for mimi's. I explained that "mimi's are nigh-nigh." It didn't go over well. Cue screaming. Ultimately, Tim came in and rocked him a bit to settle him down and then he hands him back and goes back to bed. Start over. Actually, Tim calming him did make it so that I could at least talk with him a bit so it definitely helped. So we went through everyone and everything we could think of "Dadda's sleepin', Ba's sleepin', Bippy's sleepin'....tractors are sleepin....elephants are sleepin'..." you get the point. I lay him back down to go to sleep as he is now calm. I'm settling in to go back to sleep myself when I feel him lean over, right into my ear and whisper "mimi's , mimis!" It was his own little subliminal message system. It was downright hilarious. Man this kid has quite the personality!

Okay, so it went on from there but not in the endearing way that I just mentioned. It involved much more screaming and then some. Thursday night, he woke up at 1:30. At the meer mention that "mimi's are nigh-nigh" he flipped out. I mean FLIPPED OUT! He screamed the likes of which I have not heard from this child. It was other-worldly in nature. I tried in vain to comfort him but he was in the throws of a full-blown temper tantrum and there was no going back. Tim came in and again tried to help. He was holding him and rocking when he...vomited. Yep, all over himself and daddy. He was so upset, poor thing. After getting him cleaned up, pottied and calmed down, I was able to get him back to sleep and yes, I believe I nursed him. He'd been through enough and so had I! That was definitely our low point.

I started wondering if this wasn't happening because of the potty training. It's so common for kids to "regress" in one area when they're working on conquering another area which is also why kids who have slept through the night or at least very well since they were mere weeks old, will stop doing that around 5-6 months. They're working on very exciting things like sitting, crawling, walking, running and so much more. It settles down again around 14-15 months once they have mastered those things. So it is with night weaning and potty training apparently. They don't go hand-in-hand.

I am happy to say, however, that we haven't had a repeat of Thursday night. Friday night was a little better...in that there was no vomiting and the robustness of the screaming was less intense but it was there, nonetheless. After me rocking and reasoning for over an hour, Tim came and brought him downstairs until he fell asleep again. It was still rough. Last night, however was quite good. I seem to remember him waking up around 1:30 but being that I was exhausted fromt he events of the previous 2 nights, I couldn't move to do anything or say anything and it turned out to be the right thing. He cuddled up and settled right back down. Then, he woke up at 5:30, nursed a bit and went back to sleep until 7:30 when he woke up with sunshine in his eyes and exclaimed that he had to go potty! Please, let us be over the hump!

Anyway, that's been our week and it's been a good lesson in remembering that when we're learning new things, other things slide for a bit. I know that's true for me. I like to become fully emersed in a new thing be it researching something, planning something, or learning something new. What slides for me are things like laundry and cleaning and sometimes cooking too. How I managed to land me such a reasonable husband, I'll never know. While I know he doesn't like it, and when it gets too out of control he tells me, he's hanging in there with me - the mark of a good man!

Ooops. We just broke the no accident streak. Darn blog jinx!