MaeLyn's Musings

A week ago I was so happy. Peter seemed to be making progress. He was telling me when he needed to go. And then came this week. He still holds it for long periods of time, but he won't let it go when he is sitting on the potty! He'll wake up in the morning with a dry diaper and I'll have him sit on the potty, knowing he must need to go, but he doesn't want to sit on the potty anymore, and he won't let go while he's sitting there! Half an hour after I give up trying to get him to go in the potty he'll have an accident. Today he had three accidents before lunch, the last one while he was sitting in a clean laundry basket. (Luckily I had finished folding the laundry that had been in it!) At that point I snapped and put a diaper on him because I couldn't deal with accidents calmly anymore. I'll try again later, when I can remember that this, too, shall pass.

Today for the first time, Peter managed to stay dry all day, with no accidents. What is even more exciting to me is that (again for the first time today) he even told me, twice, that he needed to go potty - before it was too late! I am so thrilled! Over the last two weeks, he's been doing pretty well. I found a bath toy duck that can "pee" into the potty, and that seemed to motivate Peter to want to go in the potty, rather than just sitting on the potty for a few seconds and being "done" and then peeing on the floor a few minutes later. Peter is also really good at going long periods of time without needing to go. He lasted through all three hours of church today, and told me he needed to go just before we left, and he was still dry. I don't seem to need to worry about him having accidents when he takes naps, and twice this last week his diapers were dry in the morning. (I wish I could say the same for Joshua!) I cross my fingers and really hope that this i...

In the last few months we bought a new computer and upgraded our creeping dial-up internet connection to a high speed DSL line. For the first time ever, we had a fast enough internet connection to watch the annual General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on our home computer. Wow. Saturday morning we moved our computer from our office to the dining room table so there would be plenty of room for our family to gather around to watch. (We couldn't put it in the living room which would have been more comfortable because the only phone jack in the kitchen/dining/living area is at the far end of the kitchen and our phone cable can only just reach the dining room.) We went to the Church website ( www.lds.org ) and followed the appropriate links and in short order we were watching Conference in our own home. In past years we have gone to our local church buildings to watch the Conference broadcasted from the Conference Center in Salt Lake City, Utah, via satel...

The idea of potty training is enough to send a shiver down my back and make me shudder. You'd think it would get easier after you've trained a few children and figured it out. Someone without children might think that. The fact is that every child is different, unique and special, and that a parent has to figure out different, unique and special ways to deal with each one, especially for something as personal, yet important, as using the potty. When I potty trained my daughter, it was pretty easy. I read a copy of "How to Potty Train in Less Than a Day", bought some M&M's for treats and some princess underwear and set to. It didn't happen in less than a day, but by the third day she had figured out what she was supposed to do and from that time on she was pretty consistent about using the potty. I don't mean to say she didn't have accidents, because she did, but they were rare and far between. And then came my sons. I won't go into details, bu...