The End Is Near

The end is near. I can see it in the very near future: NO MORE DIAPERS!!! I really never thought I'd see this day but it is almost here and I can hardly contain myself. I've already put away the changing pad and put shorts in the drawer where the diapers used to be.

I hope I'm not getting ahead of myself. Nicholas has only been going poop in the potty for a few weeks now and only this week did he start going pee in the potty. However, he's going about the whole potty training thing a whole lot better than 5-year old Michael did.

With Michael, potty training was a huge fiasco. We started with pull-ups, the Lightning Mcqueen pull-ups that have the flags and piston cups on them that disappear when wet. Michael had just turned 3 and we'd just seen the Cars movie so the pull-ups were a big hit. He got that he had to pull them down to go pee in the potty and it was a big deal to keep them dry. We also gave him potty treats for every time he went pee in the potty (yogurt covered raisins were what worked best for us). Pretty soon he was pretty good about staying dry and going in the potty.

You'd think that these sweet treats would have motivated him to go poop in the potty too but they didn't. He would not go poop in the potty. He said he was scared. I bought him a Cars sweatsuit and told him that he couldn't wear it until he went poop in the potty. He didn't care. I bought him one of those Dora CD players that had the plastic CDs and a book to go with it and propped it up where he could see it for inspiration. Still no poop. I bought him special Wiggles underwear. Nothing. He pooped in the pull-ups though, and that was messy, especially when he decided to take off the poopy pull-up and set it and his poopy butt on the white living room carpet (can we as parents morally deduct carpet cleaning expenses from the college fund?).

I'd about had it with potty training when one day right before we went on a week-long vacation he went poop in the potty! I saw fireworks, I heard music, I was so happy that at 3 years and 2 months my eldest son was finally potty trained! And he was. After that initial poop, he had no problems going. Just in time for preschool too.

My youngest son, Nicholas, is only 2 3/4 but he's been showing signs of interest in the potty for several months. I didn't really expect him to potty train before the age that his brother did, but I thought we should try anyway.

At the beginning of the summer we had the potty talk - I told him that if he wanted to go to preschool in the fall with his favorite teacher (he did) he had to go pee and poop in the potty and not in his diapers. "They don't allow diapers in preschool," I told him. He nodded and said "OK" but I didn't think he really got it. I brought up the potty anyway. He was excited when he peed in it but it wasn't enough of a thrill for him to want to continue. It was a start and stop deal until a few weeks ago.

One night at the dinner table (again, this is right before we went on our annual week-long vacation) he announced to me that he had a poopy butt and he wanted to go in the potty. I thought he meant that he had a poopy diaper but when I checked he was dry. He said, "No Mom, I want to go poop in the potty!" You will not see a mom move faster than when her little ones utter these words when they are still in diapers (ok, maybe when they say that they have to throw up!). I whisked him away to the nearest bathroom, took off his diaper, and put him on the potty seat. I'd had a lot of practice because we had done this before many times.

Imagine my surprise when with little effort some poop finally came out. He didn't cry, he didn't complain, it just happened. Those of you who know Nicholas know that he has been quite challenging in the past so this came as quite a surprise to me. I thought to myself, "Finally this kid does something with ease!" Of course, just that week I had panicked about him not being anywhere near potty trained and yanked him out of his precious fall preschool slot.

He's been pretty good about going poop in the potty ever since. He's only gone once in his diaper and that's because he had just woken up from his nap and wasn't too keen on being disrobed while still tired. The peeing, though, that's another story.

I tried using pull-ups on Nicholas too. I told him the same thing about keeping the flags and piston cups dry but he didn't get it and kept peeing in them. He kept wanting to wear underwear but he would always pee in them. My mom kept on me about getting him totally potty trained - "Just take him every 15 minutes or so and get him used to going," she told me. I wasn't so sure though. He's the type of kid who will do things when he's ready and I didn't want to push him. After all, he was still younger than Michael was when we started potty training him.

It took a call from my neighbor to get me to see the light. Her son, Jack, was 3 in May and she hadn't started potty training him at all. Once again, though, the call of preschool set off the potty training panic in her and she told me that she was just going to put him in underwear. No more diapers, she said. If he has an accident I'll just clean it up. No big deal.

No big deal indeed! I thought, If Jack can go straight from diapers to underwear, so can Nicholas. So I called him to me and told him that he wasn't going to be wearing diapers anymore except at nighttime and that he could now wear his underwear. He was so excited. He and Grandma had just gone shopping and bought new Spiderman underwear, so he immediately went and put a pair on. He was so proud of those underwear.

"Nicholas," I said trying to make my voice seem like it was coming from his underwear. "This is Spiderman. Please do something for me and keep me dry. I don't like being wet!"

"OK," he said. And he did it!! To my surprise, he has only had a couple accidents in the short 4 days since I instituted the plan. Even through naps he stays dry.

So I'm crossing my fingers that this is not a fluke and he is, indeed, potty trained. I know I've still got to eventually deal with the nighttime diaper, and we have to teach him to pee standing up and have a class in wiping etiquette, but I can see it - the end is near! Hurrah!!

(I've got to run. I've got to see if his preschool slot is still available!)

The End of the Innocence

My baby starts Kindergarten in 6 days. Six days, 9 hours, and fifty minutes to be exact. I'm excited, happy, terrified, and sad. I'm excited because this is going to open up a whole new world for him - of learning, experiences, and friends. I'm terrified because this is going to open up a whole new world for him and slowly pull him away from me and the secure arena that he and I have spent 5 years playing, learning, and loving in.

Seems like just yesterday we brought him home from the hospital all shiny and new, so innocent and trusting. We were ready for this trip into parenthood, but we didn't know what was in store or just how much our son would change our lives. So much has happened in this short 5 years. I remember the evolution of his being and all his monumental firsts: first smile, first laugh, first tooth, first time he rolled over, first time he crawled, first solid food, first tooth, first step, first word (duck), when he became a big brother, first pee pee and poop in the potty, first day at preschool, first time he wrote his name, and just recently the first time he rode a bike without training wheels.

As we enter the school age years I'm going to be trading in some of those firsts for new ones: first lost tooth for first new tooth, first girlfriend for first time he said "I love you" to me, first lunch at school for first solid food, first bus ride to school for first car ride, first sleepover at a friend's house for first night he spent away from home (at Grandma's), first time he reads a book for first word.

When my husband and I went to the Kindergarten Open House this past March, I teared up as we walked down the hall to what will be his classroom. It wasn't just the fact that my little guy was going to be going to school, it was that to me this was the end of a very innocent chapter in our lives and the opening of an unknown book. I was lucky enough to be able to stay home with him as he morphed from an infant to a toddler to a preschooler. I liked being there to experience new things with him and see him grow and learn. I find that I am saddened that I won't be there to experience his excitement as he reads a sentence for the first time or makes a new friend.

I feel a lurch in my heart when I think of my son being entrusted to another. For the first time in his life he will be totally out of my control and in someone else's hands for 2-3 days a week. Who will make sure he eats a good lunch so he has energy for the day (and a good lunch doesn't just mean eating the dessert!)? Who will tell him not to use his shirt for a napkin or to keep his finger out of his nose? Who will remind him to go to the bathroom? How will he survive a whole day without me? Will he miss me as much as I'll miss him?

And how will he react to new situations when I'm not around? What if he's bullied by a big kid? What if (God forbid) someone picks a fight with him? We have no experience with these kinds of things and why should we - he's only 5 for crying out loud! And what about all the stuff that he's bound to pick up from the other kids who are older or have older siblings?

I shouldn't worry, I know. I have taught my son about manners and family values and how to be a good friend. He really is a good kid (he brought his teacher a bouquet of "homepicked" wildflowers on meet the teacher day - his idea). He's smart and I know that he will do ok. We will survive.

What it boils down to is that I don't want my son to grow up too fast, not yet, not yet!! I remember when he was little - I couldn't wait for him to eat solid food or crawl or walk or be out of diapers or hit any one of his many milestones that signified growing up. Many times we would be out in public and an older mom or dad would smile upon us and tell us to enjoy him when he was young because he would be grown up before we knew it. And we would smile back at them and think that we had all the time in the world. But now he's starting school, which is to me, the spring board for the rest of his life. From here on out our lives will be organized according to the school schedule - holidays, vacations, even what time we get up in the morning.

I guess you could call my musings toddleresque, for I realize I am being selfish. I have had 5 years of my son all to myself and now I have to share and I don't want to. But share I must for I am not cut out for homeschooling. I just hope this person that gets to take over for me on a temporary basis, his teacher, gets to really know and understand my son like I do. It would ease my heart if perhaps she could even love him a little. Or a lot. Like I do.

Welcome to My Blog!!

Ta da!! Here it is! Finally I have a space to voice my opinions, share my thoughts, and keep up my writing skills. Why am I doing a blog? Those of you who knew me when I moved to Santa Fe, NM about 10 years ago may remember that I tried to keep you informed of my doings with a newsletter called The Santa Fe Reportress. I didn't do it very often because it cost a lot of money in paper and postage, but I enjoyed informing family and friends of my new home and all the cool things there were to do there. After I returned home and got married and had Michael, I wanted to create a website to keep everyone up to date on life in the Byrnes family, but was short on time and resources.

Needless to say, once Nicholas was born I had even less time to do any writing nor did I have the energy to do it. However, now that Michael and Nicholas are older I have managed to find some time to write. I have done a lot of writing this year, some paid, some just for fun. And now I plan on sharing it. I'm going to try to blog at least once a week if not more, so keep checking back. And please - I welcome any kind of feedback. Someday when the kids are in school I will have to go back to work so this keeps my writing skills fresh. Who knows, maybe I'll turn into a famous blogger and won't have to go back to work?!

Jen