Day 4 of underwear wearing

Esme has been wearing underwear for about 4 days now! She's been having about 3 accidents a day, but she's been using the potty consistently. We're using cloth diapers at nap time and at night. Fingers crossed that this is the turning point! Stay tuned.

Have potty, will travel

It's time for a potty training update here. Things are going pretty well right now (knock on wood). Emil has pooped in the potty twice today, and peed a few times. He's only peed in his diaper once today. Esme has peed in the potty all day, but did poop in her diaper once, too. There was a sweet moment just now when I was pottying Emil, and Esme said, "I want to go potty too, like Emil!" Too bad she had pooped in her diaper about five minutes before making that announcement. I guess you can't win them all.

I'm not sure what caused the recent change in Esme's desire to use the potty. It could be any number of things. A natural progression of maturity, seeing her baby brother use the potty, switching to cloth when at home. Who knows? All I know is that two weeks ago, when I asked Esme if she wanted to use the potty she would answer with a resolute no. I would reply that it would make mommy very happy, to which she answered, "But you already very happy, Mommy."

Then one day, it was like a switch was flipped in her little noggin. Suddenly, she announced, "I use the potty!" And lo and behold, she did, and has several times since then.

I know many of you aren't as interested in a toddler's potty training as you may be in the infant's, so here's the quick update on Emil.

I still haven't read the book on Infant Potty Training, but what we're doing is pretty simple. I just try to remember to give Emil the opportunity to go in the potty frequently throughout the day. His little body has a natural reaction to the "pssss" sound now, and as soon as I hold him over his little Baby Bjorn potty, he lets it go if he has to. The hardest thing is me remembering to get him there. On busy days, he goes way more often in his diaper. But on days that I'm on the ball and able to do it, he goes mostly on the potty. My hope is that by doing this now, he will make the transition to potty much earlier than Esme. My goal is to have him out of diapers by the time he's 2.

We're going to be traveling in Europe for most of the month of June, and as the date quickly approaches, I'm wondering how our potty training will survive this trip. Will we be crossing the ocean with a potty in our luggage? Most likely. God knows how we'll pack for all of us for a month and still be able to make it through the airport and to and from hotels and apartments and on trains and into rental cars. But if Esme can be mostly potty trained by then, I'll be one happy mama.

WE HAVE A CATCH!

Even as I type this, I'm in awe of the whole process. But Emil seems to be well on his way to being potty trained. He has successfully been pottied about six times since last night! He has caught on immediately, and seems perfectly happy to pee in a bowl instead of his diaper. All I have to do is hold him over the bowl in a supportive way, with his back up against me so he's comfortable, make the cue pssss sound, and he immediately begins to pee and/or poop. I know he has to go pretty soon after he wakes up and pretty soon after he eats, so all I have to do is get him over the bowl at those times. It's amazing.

And I have to confess something. The EC lingo has been creeping into my head as my enthusiasm for this whole process grows. I feed him, and my thoughts race unbidden to this new language: "Yes, it's a pottitunity! Maybe we'll get a catch!"

I have decided to keep using diapers on him as if they were underwear. That way accidents - or misses, as the EC community would say - aren't as frustrating. Reading other women's accounts, many people choose to take that route and continue to be successful.

Today comes a new challenge - getting the nanny to potty Emil. I think mother's intuition plays a large role in my knowing when he has to go, especially when he has to poop, since we haven't seen an identifiable pattern there yet. But in 24 hours we have already gone further with Emil's potty training than we have gone in six months with Esme. She knows how to use the potty, but simply refuses. And if she does go, she sets a limit of once or twice a day. No amount of stickers, jelly beans, or praise is reward enough to train her away from that nasty habit of peeing and pooping in her diaper. Better to prevent the habit in the first place!

Update on the Infant Potty Training

There's not a lot of progress to report at this point, but we've been letting Emil go diaper-free for a few hours at a time to get an understanding of his patterns. Basically, he goes just when I thought he did - almost immediately after eating, and within 15 minutes of waking up. We've also started making the pssss and hmmm sounds to get him to associate those with elimination.

The next step is the big one, actually trying to anticipate and aim him into the bowl, making the sound cues. I'm not sure how long we will give it - if it doesn't come too easily, we may abandon this whole idea. He's just on the cusp of being an older baby, and thus harder to train in this method. But we'll see. If you want to read a little about this whole process (and verify that I'm not making it all up!), you can check out the following links:

Diaper Free Baby organization
A good description of EC is on this site.
This site is by the author of a book that is the de facto reference on the topic.

Diaper free baby

In starting to write this post, I have already accepted the fact that many of you will think I'm off my rocker. Others will smile a knowing, supportive grin. But here it is: I'm going to try to potty train Emil, who is only 5 months old.

The official term isn't potty training, it's Elimination Communication (EC) or Infant Potty Training, or Natural Infant Hygiene. And I am going to do it b/c we're having such a hard time potty training Esme that I can't help but think there must be a better way.

The idea is that there are many diaper free cultures where mothers learn to communicate with their babies about needing to pee or poop. Like all communication, this is a two way street. The mother must recognize baby's habits and signals (squirming, funny faces, grunts), and the baby must recognize a certain sound that is associated with pee (pssss) and poop (hmmm), so that when baby hears those sounds he knows it's okay to let go. Does it still sound crazy to you? If so, then maybe it's not for you.

But I realize that communication with Emil is very possible. He can tell me what he wants pretty clearly, whether it's the boob, a toy, or sleep. I know him well enough to recognize his signals, and I already know when he pees and poops much of the time, so why not give this a try?

The first step is to observe. That is, find out when he goes (how soon after waking, how soon after eating, etc.). This involves having him naked or wearing a cloth diaper without the cover for a period of time (a morning or a day if possible). When he goes, I make the sound of choice (I guess I'm going to go with the tradition psss and hmmm, although you can make any sound you like) so that he starts to associate his elimination with those sounds. Once I recognize his patterns, we'll start putting him over a bowl or small potty to let him go.

Now there's a whole host of terminology that goes with EC - from a "catch" (peeing in the correct place) to a "miss" (yeah, uh, missing, although they say it's missing an opportunity not the receptacle) and pottitunity, or something like that. This all gets a little too cutesy and cult-like for me, so I'm going to stick with my normal vocabulary. I just don't buy that "miss" is any less negative than "accident." It has more to do with tone of voice than the word you choose.

Tomorrow, I'm planning to have an observation day with Emil. I'm sending the nanny to the library with Esme, and Emil and I are going to communicate about pee and poop all morning. I know that sounds thrilling, but I'd much rather do it now than change a gazillion more diapers over the next few years. I'm not aiming to have him 100% potty trained anytime soon. We'll still use diapers when we're out and about and at night. I just don't like using and changing all these diapers, so if we can use fewer and he can be on the road to full potty training a little sooner, then I'm all for it.

Stay tuned. This is going to be interesting.