Potty Training - Take 312

Cole has been in underwear for a while now. We ran out of candy rewards a couple of weeks ago. I don't know if that is it, but he has been having "accidents" left and right. He does fine at school. He's fine when we aren't home, but get him home and we go through a minimum of 4 pairs of underwear a day. I need to buy some more rewards and see if that makes a difference. I am at my wits end. I do not know what to do with the kid. He's obviously ready. He obviously knows when he needs to go. Is he just lazy? How do I cure laziness? Ugh! I need help!

The Sound of Silence

I'm down to just one child so I thought I'd hammer out a post for you all. Unfortunately the child I am down to is Tate, so this may be short lived. The gates are all up and the bathroom door is closed, so hopefully I'll have more than 2 minutes for an update.

Potty training is. We had 2 dry days, followed by a one accident day, followed by yesterday. Yesterday involved wet pants in the morning. We did fine through the afternoon, mostly because he was sleeping in a pull-up. In the evening, he pooped and of course he had boxers on which meant the poop went down his pants. A little while later he peed on the dining room floor, not just a little pee, a big pee. That was followed up with some more pee on my coffee table (his new game is jumping from the coffee table to the couch). It wasn't a good day. Today he's out in the tractor with Daddy, in a pull-up, so I don't have to worry about it. Maybe he's not ready, but he knows when he has to go. Our hardest part of the day is during chores. We run a pretty tight time schedule so I don't have a lot of time to stop and take him potty. He usually pees outside, but yesterday I knew he had to poop so I took him inside. He didn't poop and he threw of my chores so I sent him to play in the yard so I wouldn't have to drag around 2 kids. I guess I should have known better.

Tate is doing fine. He's cruising furniture now. His favorite game is the trust fall. I stand him up and he falls into me. He thinks it's hilarious. He's discovered the fun of going up stairs so I now have 3 gates up in my house on the main level. He loves unrolling toilet paper and playing in the potty. Right now he's busy with his brother's tractors since his brother isn't there to yell at him and take them away.

School is going ok for me. I have 2 classes. One is Differential Equations. Nuff said there. The other is an ed class. It's going to be a lot of busy work, but should be an ok class.

The farm is much the same. We have another nutritionist coming tomorrow to see if he has any advice for us. We've had three heifer calves, alive, which is an improvement although they aren't terribly smart. Typically heifers are smarter than bulls when it comes to pail breaking, but I've got a couple of dumb ones that don't like drinking from a pail. It's really annoying. Anyway, we are hoping to get some answers from this guy and hopefully we can get things turned around. It only takes a couple of months for things to go really bad and usually takes years to get it back where it was. Here's hoping!

A Dry Day

Coley finally made it an entire day, wearing underwear, staying dry! I'm so proud. He did very well. He spent the morning with Grandma and Daddy, which is usually when he has his first accident, because he's not at home. But he made it all day, including supper out! So when baby brother went to bed, he got to go play with his new Lego farm set.

He was busy analyzing all the little pieces, most of which I don't even have out yet. His favorite part is the grain bin which you can empty into the dump trailer. I'm so excited we are making progress. After he peed on a kitchen chair yesterday, I thought we'd never get here! I'm not sure what to do with him tomorrow as we are going to be gone all afternoon to look at a rotary dairy, but I guess we'll decide tomorrow! For now I'm enjoying the moment.

Potty Training - Take III

Potty training was going very well. Last Thursday he was dry, all day! It went swiftly downhill after that. Apparently he does better on the road than at home. He does great if he has no bottoms on. He'll go by himself when he needs to. Put a pull-up on him, and he's wet in no time flat. I just hope he gets this figured out before fall or he's going to get very cold. We've only had one more poop mishap - on the playroom floor. Other than that, he's been doing better about going in the toilet. It's been very frustrating for me. I know he can do it so when he doesn't I just don't know what to do. I try to reward the good and ignore the bad, but at this point ignoring he wet diapers is getting much harder. We even tried the big bribe. He currently has a lego farm set on the dining room table that he can't touch until he stays dry in underwear all day. At this rate he'll be 12.

In other news, remember this picture? Oh who am I kidding. Everyone remembers the camel bite. Anywho, I submitted it to this website. I got an email back this morning saying they didn't want to use it on their website. They want to put it in their book! How funny is that? I haven't gotten any details yet, but I'll let you know if they accept it and use it. It still makes me laugh.

Potty - Take II

We had another potty success this morning. Cole was dry! To top it off, he then peed in the potty! Whoo hoo! He is not interested at all in the pull-ups I bought, but that's ok. They are spendy and he probably isn't ready for them yet.

We've had a lot of late nights and early mornings this week. I'm exhausted. The kids haven't been getting to bed until 9 and we've been getting up at a 6:45. It's going to be an exhausting summer.

Stay tuned. I've got a good post brewing and am hoping to finish it up this weekend. Well, I need to go sit a little boy on the potty again...

Success???

We had a potty success tonight. Do you see it?

I guess that counts. Cole was sitting on the potty when he peed!

Potty Training, Revisited

Yesterday was a family day. We don't get those very often so we took advantage of the rain yesterday. After church we headed to town to get some fish for our new fish tank. Then we headed to dinner. Pat had to make a trip to the bathroom and Cole wanted to go with. Pat made him stay with me, but when he returned Cole kept saying "I gotta go. I gotta go." So Pat took him to the bathroom, and he actually sat on the potty. No potty seat and in a strange place. Granted he didn't actually go, but still! He usually fights sitting on the potty, so what a change! I'm hoping that once school is out of the summer, in 2 weeks, I can get him to potty train. I'm trying to catch him in the mornings when he first gets up, but so far I haven't had any luck.

Training Pants

Since Cole has no interest in potty training, I thought I'd try to help things along a little bit. I bought some training pants the other day. I thought maybe if he could feel himself pee, he'd start to get it. I tried to get him to wear them, but when I put them on I started laughing so hard he didn't want to wear them.
Yes, he's trying to take them off. The company, which will remain nameless, claims they have been caring for babies for over 80 years. Maybe they should've worked on a restyle of their training pants in that time.

Road Trip

Our trip to my parents last week was good. We left Tuesday afternoon and got in just before bed time. Coley got to stay up late and play racing (MarioKart) with Papa. Wednesday I gt to run errands all by myself. Pat ran in to Plainview with my dad and Cole to look at some machinery. I left the baby with my mom. It was so nice to shop by myself. Pat and I took off later that afternoon to see Jeff Dunham in Minneapolis. It was great. If you aren't familiar with him at all, look him up on youtube. I'd link a clip, but I'm too lazy. Guitar Guy was his opening act and was really good. He had a song about a black guy going to a big house and thanks to the taxpayers will have 24 hour security...Thanks OJ. Ok, maybe you had to be there, but hilarious. Jeff was on for almost 2 hours. I was expecting an hour, not two. It was great. The only bad part was the kid next to me. He was a little annoying. I don't know, I don't think it was a family show. The kid was probably old enough (Jr. High/ early HS age), but I still wouldn't have bought him a ticket. Anywho, Thursday we went out to the mall and found some pretty decent deals. I found jeans that fit! Unfortunately they are Gap jeans and cost $60, but if you spend $75 it was 30% off, so we got some other things basically free. We got Cole some new shoes and Tate a really cute winter hat. Friday morning we headed back home.

Today I took the boys to get their pictures taken. Cole did pretty well, and Tate too. Click here to see them.

I did a little shopping today too. I really need to stop that. Milk price is projected to fall to $11 so I have a feeling money will get a little tighter this year. I did find some good clearance deals though. I got a couple of shirts for me and some clothes for the kids. Just for kicks I tried on a retro print shirt. Yeah, not my style. Cute on others, but not so much on me.

Currently I am sitting in the bathroom waiting for Cole to us the potty and listening to him whine for his diaper. I am at wits end with this kid. He knows when he poops, and tells me, but refuses to use the potty. Any advice? I've tried the not pushing approach and he stopped sitting on the potty all together. I tried the slight nudge, no luck. Now I'm trying the pushy approach, but I think I'll cave before he does. I can't stand the whining! I've tried bribing him with a sucker, but he still won't go. Well, I better go. He starting to tear up, which means he either can't hold it anymore or he's going to start screaming.

A Poopy Day

We had a potty success! Cole managed to poop in the potty tonight. He told me once he needed to poop so we rushed to the potty, but he got distracted by the stickers. He used to hate sitting on the potty without pants, so I started giving him stickers for every time he sits on the big potty without pants on. Shortly after the first warning he started squatting and saying poop again, so we rushed back to the bathroom. He started to get distracted again, but apparently the urge was too great to ignore this time. After a little crying for his diaper, we had success! He got a special sticker for actually going in the potty. I'm so proud of my little guy!

I know, I know, but here are a couple of potty pictures for you. Don't worry, no pictures of the actual poop.

Cole doesn't really like his picture taken...