Further evidence that lackadaisical parenting works

Allowing Jacob to potty train in his own time seems to have worked.  It's 4 weeks since we started potty training, and without really noticing, we were done about 2 or 3 weeks ago.  We haven't tried to push night-time dryness, as we figure that will also come in its own time, but right from the start he probably had 2 or 3 dry nights a week.  We haven't added it as a target yet, we're quite happy to work on one thing at once.  And that one thing really hasn't been too much of a bind.  He seems to have a bladder worthy of a superhero - as on at least 3 occasions he's gone an entire day at nursery without needing a wee (this is not withholding, he genuinely doesn't need to go.  He'll often be back at home for an hour or two before he finally goes, and even then he doesn't produce a huge amount).  This makes me a lot more confident being out and about, so we ditched the pull-ups before he'd been through a single pack of them, and we're rocking the pants now.

All of this means that we're now frantically scrambling to get him into Meithrin (nursery/pre-school/the class that 3 year olds attend for a half-day every day before they start full-time school the September after they turn 4) ready for September.  We went to see our preferred school today, and it was Lovely.  We have our fingers tightly crossed for a place.

I'd like to add that this is not through any desire to get rid of him or to rush him into education - personally I'm of the keep-them-home-til-they're-about-7 school of thought.  Practically though, I'm going to have a newborn in November.  Having a couple of hours a day to focus on the baby might be kinda nice.  And whilst I'd love to homeschool, Jamie is not on board, I worry about my mental health, and the boy loves his day nursery and the friends he's gained there.  He can't continue at that particular day nursery (to the uninitiated, a day nursery is a private childcare facility where you shove your children while you go to work) because it's near my current place of work, and therefore far from my house.  This makes me (and him) sad.

Any road.  My baby.  School.  Already.  Crazy.

This afternoon, for no real reason other than just having discovered that they do cheap afternoon sessions, I took the boy swimming.  It's been over a year since we last went.  It used to be a huge struggle, it's expensive, it was too much for us to face.  I'm not proud of the fact that we let it go so long, but always sometimes, it's just easier to take the ... easy road.

So I took him swimming, on my own.  After umpteen nervous trips to the toilet, we emptied our respective bladders, and took the (both literal and figurative) plunge.  He did not stop laughing the whole time we were in there.  He loved it.  He decided he could swim, and showing unbelievable abilities at mind over matter (I'm starting to believe this superhero thing might be closer to the truth than not), he pretty much could.  With a flotation vest, he kicked, he struck out with his hands, cupped and pulled himself through the water.  He made startling progress round the lazy river (as long as I had my hand under his tummy).  All in all, he was awesome.  We swam for 2 hours, and we're going back again tomorrow (capitalising on the confidence while we can!).

It just goes to show, that like the potty training, you leave them to do shit in their own time, and they do it.  Go on, pick holes in my logic.  Am I too passive?  Neglectful?  Denying him opportunities?  We could have kept on pushing the swimming when he was obviously uncomfortable, or we could have done what we did, and let him come to it in his own time.  Same with the pottying.  I'm so proud of him for both achievements and I'd do the same again, if I had the choice.

When we got home, he carefully spread the blanket out on the floor, and lined some shells up around the edge.  That took about an hour, and he told us that the blanket was a swimming pool and the shells were on the beach.  He lay on his stomach and 'swam' around his pool for a while.

Then he climbed on the sofa, jumped onto the blanket and yelled "Splash!" :D

I could watch his imaginative play all day long.

He's gone to bed and left me under strict instructions not to tidy his seaside up.  I wouldn't dream of it.

Fetes are great

Having got over our yucky stomach flu, we headed off to see Jacob's future wife in Cardiff.  Our lovely friend Claire had made us some beautiful pink cupcakes to celebrate our pink news (I'd like to preface this by saying that whilst I'm happy to receive and eat pink cupcakes etc, I don't approve of gender stereotyping and the practice of making all girl's toys/clothes pink, so this child will be happily clothed in Jacob's cast-off clothes and as many non-pink outfits as I can find!  I'm sure some pink will creep in, in the same way that I wear pink as much as I wear any other colour.  It's the total head-to-toe pinkness that drives me crazy - I don't think I could cope!) and we discussed the impending babyness while Jacob and Amelia cavorted around and refused to eat any lunch.

We then braved a local Scout fete (Jacob's first fete), which challenged all Jacob's powers of Doing Something New (screaming fit after screaming fit, until he realised that he might actually Get Stuff if he joined in), and we had to give up on 3 years and 3 months of perfect parenting when Jacob was given his first sweet (a hard lollypop) and his first crisps (unsalted).  He was over the moon to win a puppy bag on the soft toy tombola - he'd just seen a child carry away a huge Winnie the Pooh (current obsession) and we had to carefully explain that he couldn't choose what toy he wanted, he would win one.  Despite this, as soon as he'd chosen his ticket he exploded into excitement over the potential to have a puppy (having seen a puppy toy lying around), and we breathed a sigh of relief when the girl handed him a puppy.

(I've managed to prise the puppy out of his sweaty grasp to wash it overnight [it didn't smell very clean] but otherwise, he hasn't let it go since.  And it took several hours for him to come down from the sugar high).

His fear of all things Fete was totally overcome when the loudspeaker requested participants for an adult tug-of-war, and Jacob ran at top speed towards the ring, screaming that he wanted to pull the rope ;)

We passed an ice cream stand on the way back, and stopped for some refreshing lollies (our fear of him having sweets doesn't extend to ice creams, for some reason.  I don't know what's wrong with us, really!).

... and Amelia practised her Zombie-tongue look ready for Hallowe'en.

Both of them crashed out on the sofa when we got back (note the puppy, still firmly grasped) with a bit of Ben and Holly, while we ate more cupcakes and drank more tea...

... and Amelia's marionette made friends with her cat.

We left there before tea time to make a quick stop (ha!) in IKEA on the way home.  We eventually arrived home at 8.45pm.  Pregnant ladies can't stay out that late, it wears us out.  And 3-year-old boys don't even protest when they're taken out of the car, plonked on the potty, then stuffed unceremoniously into bed.

It was Jacob's first full day out of the house in pants - not a pull-up in sight.  He coped admirably, going to the toilet whenever we suggested it and happily using adult-sized toilets and hand-dryers in public loos.  Just over 3 weeks, and I'm very tentatively saying that we have a potty-trained child :D

Good night.

Cousins

Tuesday, June 5th

With my sister Cate's due date being yesterday, and me just getting over my usual half-term fluey thing, I had planned to drive down to Devon with Jacob today, so I could spend a few days with her, going to see What to Expect When You're Expecting and doing other such pregnant-sister delights.

All of that was scuppered, when my alarm went off at 6am this morning and I saw a text from my sister at 2am, saying "Off to the hospital, will keep you posted...".  At 6.30am, the landline rang and it showed my sister's mobile number - I answered, expecting her to say it was another false alarm and they were back home.  Instead, her lovely voice said "I had a baby!".

She had arrived at the hospital to find herself already at 9.5cm dilated (really, I thought that kind of thing only happened in sitcoms), jumped in the birthing pool, and squeezed out a baby a few short hours later (I'm sure it was more difficult that I'm explaining; it's just that in comparison with my 32.5 hour labour, episiotomy and 2nd degree tear, I'm just slightly jealous).  

So before 6 hours had passed, I'd driven 200 miles (Jacob stayed dry for the whole journey!), settled in to my parents' house, and dashed off to the hospital for some newborn cuddles.  And ahhh, cuddle we did ;)

Anouk Amelie, my precious niece, born 5th June 2012.

 3 generations of females :D

Wednesday, June 6th

On day 2, Jacob got to meet his cousin (he wasn't allowed into the hospital as he wasn't a sibling) and was very taken with her.  When he woke up that morning, I told him "I've got some very exciting news.  Auntie Catey's baby came out of her tummy!" Jacob was very excited and said "I've got some exciting news too Mummy.  I love you!".  Bless him ;)

Jacob meeting his cousin, a little apprehensively, but unfortunately not allowed more time to get to know her due to my Dad refusing to let him settle and get used to her :/

Thursday, June 7th
On Day 3, I spent a few hours reassuring my sister about breastfeeding, having lots of chats, and getting her out of the house for a walk.  And being SO excited about getting to have a newborn of my own before the year is out!

Anouk, mistaking me for her Mama ;) 

She looked so happy when her frantic flailing resulted in the right two fingers getting in there. 

Catey doing the International sign for babywearing - jazz hands.  I helped her get set up using her Close sling, and here Anouk is latched on and feeding, where she stayed during our shopping trip/walk.

Friday, June 8th
We stayed for 4 days then sadly had to make our way home.  Jacob coped admirably with all the change, and carried on using the potty/toilet perfectly, with only one accident when my Dad took him away without seeing if he needed the potty first (and then not telling me that he'd had an accident until all opportunity for changing him had passed), enough said.  We slept in the same bedroom (Jamie couldn't get time off work so wasn't with us), with Jacob on a mattress on the floor and me in the big bed.  He kept waking in the night and saying "Mummy, are you there?" which was the loveliest thing in the world.  He doesn't half make a lot of noise in the night, though!  Lots of sleepless nights resulted for me, especially as I began to feel proper kicks inside, which were properly keeping me awake ;)

I took this photo in the pitch-black middle-of-the-night, you can't quite tell but he was lying completely sideways on his bed, with his head hanging off.

Potty Success

Quite suddenly, Things seem to have clicked with using the potty.  After our last aborted attempt, we decided to hang fire until the summer holidays, when we could have naked days spent in the garden with a potty to hand and no pressures from nursery or anyone else.

However, the recent nice weather meant that we had our naked days in the garden a little earlier than expected, and we had some limited* success with using the potty.

*Limited because as I may have previously mentioned, Jacob still had no prior warning of a poo being imminent, and these special moments happened twice in the paddling pool.  Ugh.

After a last week in nursery before the half-term holidays, we broke the pants out again on Thursday, and despite me coming down with my regular-as-clockwork school holiday illness, had lots of success all day Thursday and Friday, including Jacob's first ever declaration of "I need a poo!", followed by actually getting on the potty on time and doing ALL his business there.  I also realised that he was staying dry through his naps, and while out-and-about, and he started asking to use the toilet while we were in supermarkets, and being very happy to sit on grown-up toilets (previously, he's been terrified of falling in and has refused to entertain sitting anywhere near one).

This weekend, we've not had a single mishap; he's asked to use the toilet or potty at 3 or 4 hourly intervals (which I suppose is a bonus of late potty-training - no 15-minutely trips for us!) and we've managed to bribe him into wearing pullups (up there with Water and Vegetables on Jacob's scale of Unacceptable Things) so that we don't have to run quite so fast to find public toilets if we're not at home.

Due to the two extra bank holidays, nursery is shut this week, and if I get better soon I'm taking Jacob down to Devon with me to poke my sister's ready-to-burst belly some more.  So we have a further 7 days to crack this, before letting him loose on nursery again.  Due to the amount of exciting activities they do there, I think he's far less likely to remember that he needs the toilet/ask to go, so I really want him to be comfortable in pants before he goes back.

Fingers crossed!

Being 2

It seems strange that a particular date, albeit the anniversary of his birth, should have such an impact on who J-cub is, and his development. Maybe it's that our expectations of him have changed - I've certainly noticed that now he's a 'preschooler', I've been spending much more time talking with him about colours and numbers and shapes etc, and surprise surprise, he's totally receptive to doing a bit of learning, can identify and match all his shapes and colours, and will happily demand 'TWO biscuits!' when asked what he would like for a snack.

He's been using 2 word sentences for ages, with the odd 3 word combo thrown in for good measure, but he surprised us completely with a six word sentence the other day - on viewing this brilliant video with me, J-cub said "Mummy show me picture baby happy" which left us with our mouths hanging open in disbelief while he happily skipped away to grind more Cheerios into the carpet.

On Friday of last week, Jamie had a holiday day from work, so we decided to head off for J-cub's birthday trip to Tenby (as we were rained off on his actual birthday). Just before we were about to leave (as in, seconds before), he thought he should just check the opening times for the aquarium we were taking our Nemo-obsessed child to. And, it was closed on Fridays. So we postponed yet again, and went for a walk in the Mumbles instead, where the tide was crazy high due to the Super Moon, the sea was like glass, and the sky was a glorious blue. We had a lovely walk from carpark to playground, where we all sat and ate fish 'n chips on a bench (J-cub ate fish! First time ever (apart from tuna...), no objection at all, no batter, no ketchup, just one of those little wooden forks and away he went) had a quick play, then more of a walk down to the wonderful Verdi's for ice-cream sundaes.

J-cub has had various licks of ice-cream and lots of ice-lollies along the way, but hasn't had his whole own bowl before, let alone a Flake and a wafer. And of course, now that he's 2, it seems perfectly acceptable to fill him up with loads of crap at every opportunity ;).

He wielded his sundae spoon with aplomb, nommed his Flake, stole my wafer and crammed it whole into his mouth before I could protest, and ate from his glass-stemmed bowl without even coming close to an accident. Think we might have to repeat this treat more regularly in the future.

We walked back to the car as the sun set, deftly avoiding the 'I don't want to hold your hand' screams by getting J-cub to hold Bunny's hand, while I held Bunny's other hand. This was the Funniest Thing J-cub had ever encountered, as demonstrated by the smile in the below picture.

(And I won't mention that when we got back to the (just 5-year old) car, the door handle inexplicably fell off. ARGH).

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Several times a day, I get requests for 'Bed, Mummy', which means J-cub would like me to build him a den. I LOVE building dens. We have a massive stack of blankets in the lounge, and lots of cushions, and happily interlocking chairs, which make this pursuit easy and fun. This week's den has been sponsored by the trampoline, and a very simple two-blanket arrangement.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

And then on Saturday, we finally made our way out for J-cub's birthday treat. And of course, we didn't go to Tenby, to the aquarium (cos the car door handle fell off, didn't it, and I didn't fancy leaving the car in a carpark all day, in case someone thought a handle-less car looked an easy prospect) - so we went to Folly Farm instead. Folly Farm was our original birthday destination, until we found that it doesn't open in the week at this time of year. So our crap procrastination actually meant that we got to go where we'd originally wanted to go, in the end, so everyone was happy. Phew.

Few were more happy than this 2-year old, who stroked ponies, and lambs, and chickens, and tortoises, and pigs, and goats, and all kinds of other things. He was particularly happy that one of the donkeys was called Tilly ("Tilly eee-or!"), he nearly had a fit when he saw there were FIVE giraffes (it took us about 20 minutes to walk up the path away from the giraffes, as every 2 steps we had to turn around and wave "Bye-bye, grafs"), and there were almost too many slides to cope with.

It was a beautiful sunny day, which made playing in the sand all the more fun, as I envisaged all the days on the beach soon to come.

Since then, my preschooler has had a horrendously bad haircut (his fault, for not sitting still), learnt the sign for 'salad' (thank you, Mr Tumble) and therefore decided that his favourite meal is salad (anything with a bit of spinach and a carrot or two on it is salad, thankfully), and done his first wee on the potty. We've been reading Pirate Pete's Potty since it arrived, along with a super big frog potty (regular-sized potties are way too small for him) for his birthday.

On Sunday, while running around naked after his bath (and, probably quite dangerously, having his hair cut at the same time), I pointed out several times that he didn't have a nappy on and if he needed a wee, he should go on the potty. He went on the floor first of all, and we had a look at the page in the book where Pirate Pete goes on the floor, and we saw that it doesn't matter at all! J-cub helped me clear it up, then sat down for some more haircutting action. A few seconds later he announced "Mummy wee-wee", grabbed his book and his comb, sat on the potty, started reading and combing his hair and .... he did it! We had such a party, pressed the 'Yeeeaaaaahhhh!' button on the book a million times, and sang a 'Pee pee on the potty' song which Jamie was quick to point out came from Look Who's Talking Too rather than being my own genius creation. I don't care, J-cub loved it, and he danced around in a hilarious fashion, obviously proud of himself.

He now sits on the potty several times a day, although he mostly has his nappy on, at least he knows what it's for.

So there we have it - what a difference a couple of weeks makes. J-cub has his 2 year development check with the health visitor on Thursday, and I'm looking forward to seeing what she makes of him.