You know.... 'that mom' who always feels it necessary to tell you exactly when her child reached a milestone a little early. Well, I caught myself bragging about Adelyn's savvy potty skills at a young age. Before she was 2, and as soon as we placed the potty chair next to the grown-up potty, she was already poppin' a squat to use it. Apparently all the training needed at the time was a couple years of watching her mommy and daddy do it. I was so proud that I decided that I need not push the envelope and put her in panties quite yet. Besides, I was in NO HURRY to deal with soiled panties.
Well, thanks to all my bragging I'm sure, my daughter will be 3 in a couple months and flat REFUSES to use the potty. She seems to be quite content using her diaper and rarely tells me when she needs to go or that she's already gone. In one of my many attempts at training her to use the potty, I let her run around the house half naked so she was tempted to use the potty. Well, it worked in the short-term. But when she needed to do the big deed (#2), she had no problem with doing it right on the floor. Yep, on the floor.... while skipping.
So what is a mommy to do? I've done the reward chart... complete with reward candy and reward song. See? Everyone says that she'll do it when she's ready... and that you can't be too agressive about it or it will back-fire. Did I miss the boat? I'm starting to feel like a failure of a mommy. *head bowing*
Oh, and you know what else I'm feeling guilt about? Adelyn is also addicted to her pacifier. It's apart of her sleeping ritual... she likes to suck while she twirls her hair. We've been having lots of discussions lately about how pacifiers are meant for babies but she's not budging. So, last night, I decided to take some advice and cut the end of it off. Apparently if you cut a little bit at a time, eventually it will lose its appeal. When Adelyn put the cut paci in her mouth, she said, "MOMMY! It's BWOKE! I don't want BWOKE paci!" And she proceeded to chuck it as far as she could across the room. Well, then she asked for it again, sucked on it for about 10 minutes, and then chucked it across the room before she fell asleep with NO PACI. Amazing, right! I felt awesome! Well, that was short-lived, too, apparently.... because it was the very first thing she wanted this morning as she woke up... and the very first thing she wanted when we got in the car from our classes at the Y. She seems to be content sucking on a bwoken... I mean, broken.... pacifier. So we'll see how it goes over when I cut a little more tonight.
Geesh.... I would have never thought I'd be so affected by the simple challenges we face as parents of toddlers.
If any of you have it all figured out, could you let me know the secrets? Better yet... blog about it so I can learn on an intermittent basis.
