Potty Training | From: The Little Pink House

cloth & crunch

Jul 272010

I am a farmer’s wife. But raising organic vegetables does not make one naturally crunchy.

I have a large stash of cloth diapers. Some from the days when I wore diapers. (See the light blue “Curity” logo stamped in the corner? Antique.) Some, with Velcro closures, from when my siblings were young. And more, with an extra layer of absorbency, that close with snaps, and were hand-me-downs from the girls’ cousins.

But that doesn’t make cloth diapering come naturally.

We potty train early (though not as early as some!). Which saves a whole lot of money in and of itself.

And when our children are partially potty trained, we bring out the cloth diapers.

Carb-Consumin’, Crawlin’ Cutie

Jul 122010

Oops!

Mary girl,

You adore carbohydrates. From white pizza crust to whole wheat organic bread, Rice Chex to Cheerios, hot dog bun to animal cookies, graham crackers to Ritz crackers.

Protein, not so much. You used to adore yogurt. Now it’s like pulling teeth to get you to eat it. Perhaps because you prefer to use those four pearly whites to chew everything, and the yogurt cereal just isn’t very chewy? Cheese looked exciting (the color, I suppose), but you aren’t yet a fan of cheese like your daddy and sister.

So we feed you carbs. With a little bit of Mommy’s milk on the side, for protein. And lots of water from your sippy cup to make all those crumbles go down smoothly.

You are nearly crawling. You’re so, so close. But it’s still more scooting than crawling. (But you’re right on schedule with where your sister was at this age.) You’d probably crawl if you crawled backwards, but there is no going backwards for you—you’re goin’ forward, or you aren’t going. You’re that kind of girl! So you just set your eyes on the goal, and rolling, scooting, pushing, pulling, you get there!

Your sister can often be heard saying, “Mary is my bestest friend,” or “Mary is such a good sister. We are such good friends.” You adore her. Except when she squeezes a might too hard when she hugs you!

It’s obvious you want to be just like sister. You are never happier than when playing with her toys! You even figured out that you were in a walker and sister was in a real seat when we ate dinner at Aunt Katie’s. Everyone marveled at how much happier you were to be seated like a big girl right next to your sister!

You love your daddy so very much. You wave at him whenever he comes or goes. And you say “Dah dah.” That in itself would be enough to make him melt, except he comes near and you lean into his chest and want to snuggle. You have him wrapped around your little tiny baby finger, my girl.

of the cloth

Oct 312008

Thursday…

This isn’t exactly the great big long update post about our weekend that I had planned. That will be put off to somewhere beyond folding the laundry and making bread and coming up with something for dinner. No, this post is a call to all you cloth diapering mommies out there… Help, where do I start?!

Actually, thanks to my sister-in-law Megan, I’m well on my way to being a cloth diapering mommy. When we were at her house over the weekend, Megs gave me a big bag with the following:

5 Bummis Super Whisper Wrap (size small)
23 Snug to Fit Diapers (14 with printed fabric)
3 Dri-Line Diapers
2 Bummis Tote Bags (1 purple size medium, 1 blue size large)

There are definitely a lot of stains, but she said she’s washed them and bleached them and to no avail (first question would be, what’s your best trick for getting out stubborn stains?! I’m thinking of soaking them in bleach first…). I looked on eBay completed listings, and it doesn’t look like used cloth diapers are a very popular item? It appeared that they go for somewhere around $2 per diaper, and closer to $4 or $5 for the wraps? But that was based upon about two listings… Anyone else ever bought used diapers? I don’t even know what they go for new…

First question relating to stains, second would be, what’s your favorite wrap/cover/whatever-you-call-it? Punkin’s bottom is very little, and the diapers are very big. We snap them on the tightest snap and they work fine, but the small size wraps barely cover the huge thick diaper. So we’re going to need to buy some bigger wraps very soon, and I’m not positively impressed with these. What would you recommend?

Question number three, is it okay to use the tote bags as a diaper pail, er, bag? The diapers are only ever barely wet, but I don’t want to stick them in with the rest of the dry dirty laundry, and don’t have room for a diaper pail (hard to find room for that basket of cloth diapers, whew they take up a lot of space!).

So yes, we’re on Day 2 of cloth diapering. You wouldn’t believe it, would you, that this all-natural, old-fashioned farmer’s wife has been using disposable diapers for the first 11 months of her daughter’s life?! Well, it’s for the simple reason that I am actually supposed to be sort of, you know, working part-time at this family business we have, and hubby also thinks he wants dinner and a clean house (imagine that), and he didn’t think I had time to wash diapers constantly on top of everything else. Besides which, neither of us was going to rinse out a dirty diaper in the toilet. No way. Not at all.

But now our little girl almost never has a mess in her pants (and that’s only when she’s somewhere other than home, when we won’t be using cloth anyway), and her wet diapers are only barely wet because we didn’t quite set her on the potty soon enough. We find ourselves throwing away dozens of barely wet diapers, only because it seems wrong to put a slightly wet diaper back on her little bottom.

Suddenly, it seems feasible to do cloth diapers during the daytime. Because more often than not, I’ll only have a diaper or two per day that has to go in the wash. So it won’t be loads and loads of extra laundry. And we’ll still do disposables at night time and when we’re travelling. But it will cut way down on the disposable diaper bill (even though they’re cheap as can be at Costco).

In fact, as wet as she gets her diapers, we wouldn’t need half that thickness. As soon as those training pants we have in the “grow-into bin” fit her, I think I’ll just put those on her with a wrap over it. Of course, by that time she’ll probably be talking and can tell me she needs to go. (Our baby has a very small bottom. You just wouldn’t know it encased in all those layers of cloth as it is these days… She was in preemie diapers for weeks. Not newborn, those fell right off. Premie. She’s still only in Costco size three!)

So yes…we’re delving into the unknown world of cloth diapers. Well, not totally unknown. I did change quite a few on a certain sister and brother of mine. But that was back in the days when they’d just figured out how to add Velcro to good old-fashioned cloth diapers (the kind I use as burp rags and dust rags now), and when plastic pants were all the rage in baby fashion. Yup, a lot has changed… And I have a lot to learn.

But I’m figuring that my goal with Ruth’s future siblings (necessary parenthetical note: no, this is not an announcement) will be to get them potty trained as soon as possible so we can switch to cloth and cut down on the diaper expense. Of course, if all her siblings have such little bottoms as she does and are trained as fast or faster than she was, I’ll have to buy smaller cloth diapers. These things are huge! (Merritt frequently reassures her that yes, they make her bottom look fat.)

Now back to that laundry I’m folding. Which only includes one diaper. Yep, I can handle that kind of laundry… Especially considering the money we’re saving!

last night’s revelation

Oct 242008

#1 Reason Not to Potty Train Your Child Until They Can Talk

You might find yourself hanging out in the bathroom at 11 p.m. with a child who has been inconsolable for the past several hours, until you thought to put them on the potty again…

Fifteen minutes of serious concentration and we all slept until 6 a.m. Why didn’t I think of that before 11 p.m.?!

Okay, she had been on the potty at nine. But apparently she didn’t have to go then.

Of course, the real revelation of the evening was not to give a toddler “crunchy” yogurt with flax seeds, sunflower seeds, and strawberries… Even if you attempt to avoid “most” of the seeds!

Mostly Pumpkin

Oct 182008

Dear Little Pumpkin,

You have just learned to get to a sitting position all by yourself. Which has opened up all new worlds. At supper Nanna was telling us all how you were sitting up when she went to get you up from your nap. I said that would be a first. Then your Grandma said well she didn’t think about it, but when she went to get you up the other day, it was dark and she had to feel all around for you and she finally found your head–you were sitting up. We teased her about manufacturing the story to keep up with your other grandma, but we were all soon seeing manifestations of your ability to sit up. I have yet to see you take more than about one crawling step forward. But you crawl backwards, change to a sitting position, go back to crawling again, lunge forward, and pretty soon you’ve been all over the place. I know that when you really start crawling you’re going to be everywhere at once. But for now, with the backwards crawling and such, you don’t cover too much territory too fast.

With all the visitors, you had lots of help and encouragement in the crawling department. They also tried to get you to talk, but you waited until everyone was gone to start saying “Daddy.” It sounds more like Gah-eeh. But considering the fact that you say it every time Mommy excitedly announces “Daddy’s home!”, I think it’s meant to sound like Daddy. And yes, you’ve said it for him now, too, and he’s thrilled. You also say hi, mostly when I’ve just picked up the phone and said hi. But of course, you don’t understand that your little Fisher Price telephone with the rotary dial is a phone. So you think Mommy’s nuts when she pretends to talk on it! But you love saying hi, and you’re finally catching on to waving bye bye, but you do it with both hands.

We continue to have all sorts of funny potty incidents. Like when Daddy took you to the potty chair yesterday morning with your burp rag in your hand. I warned that you’d mop the bathroom floor with it, but Daddy figured that was okay. After he took you off the potty chair, he discovered a very wet burp rag. He said he thought you had gone more. You hadn’t mopped the floor, you’d soaked up your potty in your burp rag. I think that’s the last time you get your raggy rag on the potty!

And then of course there was the time a couple days ago that Mommy sat down to finish her article for YLCF about potty training. Not long after I got started, you woke up from your nap, an hour early. You didn’t fuss much, so I hoped you’d fall back asleep. You didn’t. I kept writing. When you finally got fussy, I went over to get you up, and the smell that greeted my nose told me we’d just flunked in the potty training department. Silly mommy should have been listening to what she was writing in her article. Daddy told me you didn’t go much messy that morning!

Yesterday afternoon you got to watch Mommy vaccuum, and as always, you loved it. For some reason vaccuums and brooms make you so excited. I guess that must have been why Mommy dropped the newly-refilled cornstarch container that she was trying to close with one hand… You were fascinated by the white powder everywhere (in fact, I thought I was going to see you take off crawling right then and there, clear across the kitchen floor). You were even more thrilled when it meant I got out the vaccuum again.

I love you, my little Pumpkin. Thanks for being Mommy’s good helper.

Love,
Mommy

bullet points throughout the day

Oct 162008

I love Picasa’s new collage feature. Makes my computer wallpaper the cutest ever. (Complete with many photos of hubby and baby girl, of course.)
Before I’d even written the last post, another baby girl had already arrived–I just didn’t know it until I checked my email! Riley Adele is Ruth’s newest second cousin. Congrats Jacob and Whitney. Hope you’re getting some rest!
Yes, my brother’s face is on the cover of a book. No, I don’t own it. Apparently it’s pretty much a pictorial version of God’s Harvard, and not very complimentary to the Right it portrays. Of course, what they criticize is what we praise. From the review: “In many ways Right serves a similar purpose for those who may regard Evangelical Christians as an ominous growing force in American culture and politics. It allows readers to see these ambitious young people as they are: a bit boringly dressed when compared to their contemporaries at other colleges, for sure, but uniformed for the culture wars and far more prepared to inherit the nation than your average college kid.”
Our baby girl loves sitting up. Not just being set on her bottom, but going from any position to sitting up. Especially when she’s supposed to be sleeping. Or right after she wakes up.
Note to self: If child wakes up too early from nap while you are editing a post on potty training, bear in mind that you might want to be paying more attention to signs that child may need to finish the morning’s incomplete messy, rather than continue to edit article.

sunshine and saturdays

Aug 022008

As I write Merritt’s within an hour or two of being finished cutting the second cutting of alfalfa… They just get through with one field and it’s on to another. But there’s only one more cutting after this, in the same field. The year is going by so fast!

Punkin’s teeth are coming in really well on the right side…she’s looking lop-sided. She continues her amazing potty habits. Her Nanna babysat her this afternoon, and she’s really amazed.

We’re looking forward to lots of visits from family this month–as well as a few friends and would-be family stopping by as well! I have a feeling August will fly by… And then it’s on to my favorite time of year.

But let’s not rush things. Because soon my baby daughter will be one year old! Oh my.

Have a great weekend. Enjoy the sunshine.

so proud of our pumpkin (mostly about potty training)

Aug 012008

I haven’t had to change a messy diaper since the second time our baby girl went on the potty. That’s nearly all week long, folks. After I feed her every morning, we sit her on the potty. And inevitably, she has her daily messy. She made noises during dinner the other night, so we switched from high chair to potty chair, and she had a messy. She even sometimes stays dry through a nap and wets on the potty after she gets up and eats. Even if the diaper gets a little wet during playtime or naptime, she often will wet again on the potty. Talk about saving money on diapers! We are amazed. And I have an idea I’ll have a sister-in-law or two who won’t want to hear anything about it. And yes, I know, I can’t expect all my children to be this perfect…

Amidst all the potty training we’re also doing teething. Ruthie has two teeth on top now, but not the two teeth you’d expect. They are both on the right. The middle right and the next one to the right (how come none of the baby books have diagrams with names of the teeth?!). It just came through yesterday. But we’re not worried about being lop-sided for long. The two on the left look to be catching up soon. Somebody’s going to look all grown up.

Not to mention being all grown up. And oh yes, we finally figured out how to roll onto the stomach other than in our sleep! We put Ruth down after we got home from town, and all of a sudden Merritt and I see a face staring at us over the bumper pads. She’d rolled onto her tummy, and that meant she could see out. Uh-oh. She’s figured it out! I have an idea one of these days I’ll put her down to play in the living room, go take a shower, and find her waiting for me when I get out or something. Nothing like growing up overnight… Or making me feel all grown up overnight! Oh but we love being parents. And we’re so proud of our little pumpkin.

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