Real Life People

It's been 10 days since I last reported on the potty-ing and I am happy to report that we are back to real life now. Whoo hoo!!! I don't know what day we're on in potty world, I lost count a while back...surely it's day 127 by now?? I don't know but the good news and YES it is GOOD news is that aiden is now fully potty trained with maybe a 5% anxiety rate about it. That's like nothing. Compared to where we were man this place we're at now is heaven. Aiden tells us in words (no dancing, galloping on tip toes, or running around saying he's keeping his undies dry!) he will actually TELL us: "I have to go pee pee" and he's positively awesome at the pee pee's. He rocks pee pee time like nobody's business. In fact he wakes me up at 4 am cause he has to go pee pee. I could do without this but hey no complaints. Now for the dreaded poo report: he's now going every day, usually once a day but occasionally even twice a day. He still has some anxiety when it comes to poo but usually about 5 minutes worth of sitting on the potty will produce results. No crying, no bartering, no threatening. It's amazing.

Now we still have some work to do before I will deem him a graduate of the potty training university...like he still has anxiety using big people potties when his seat is not available AND he still has anxiety over using any potty but his own. If we are out and he has to go, he would prefer to wait/ leave wherever we are so he can come home and do his business in his own potty. But again these are such small matters from where we've been i.e. the 7th layer of HELL (yes I have decided that's what hell will be like- constant awful potty training that DOES. NOT. STOP. trust me people-repent and get saved cause you DO NOT want to go there!!) So now since we've pretty much got this potty business taken care of and I can look at it with a little bit more perspective then when I was right in the middle. I would still sum it up as the hardest thing I have yet to do as a parent. I would still sum up these past 127 days or 20 or 30 or whatever it has been as being some of the most emotional, anxiety filled, stressful awful days EVER. I hate the potty and all that it stands for. I hate, hate, hate, DETEST the words "keeping my undies dry!"

But what we have gained in our new "real life" is that potty-ing is a family event. In our attempts to make potty-ing seem easier, funner, what not we have now turned it into an event in our house. Aiden goes to the bathroom with both ben and I. He coaches us. Tells us to push, tells us it's not hard, tells us to wipe and tells us when we can flush. It's interesting being coached. Let's me know how we must sound to him. But the upside to this is aiden will praise us when we go and tell us how proud he is of us and get us cookies. Who doesn't want a cookie for going to the bathroom??The downside is he wants to tell everyone that "mommy went pee pee" or "daddy went poo poo" cause in our effort to show how proud we are of HIM, he now thinks we openly tell people about our potty accomplishments. Like I said, work still needs to be done before he will graduate potty training with complete awareness of how it all works...but we'll take it!!

So besides the potty training fiasco we have also been dealing with a bunch of sickness in our family. Started with ben who had an upper respiratory infection and then I got it and was completely out of commission for a few days and am still fighting off the lingering cough and now aiden, who has been sick for the past few days and today got diagnosed with Strep throat :-( So just one thing after another around here!!! Aiden started antibiotics today though and ben and I were able to get the Christmas decor down on his day off this week...yes January 19th and we JUST got our christmas stuff down, if that tells you anything about the time warp we've been living in. So hopefully life is about to return to actual normal. To real life normal. Like I promise my next blog post will not contain the word "POTTY"! :)