So I was secretly hoping that by posting about our difficulties with potty training, I would jinx myself into some progress… (not really), but I think I did anyway! 1 hour and 45 minutes is how long Natasha sat on the potty today… and she finally went! FINALLY.

It was the longest 1 hour and 45 minutes in history! The hardest part was actually keeping Veronika entertained during this time because she was bored silly. Natasha went on the potty at 5:00pm and by 6:00pm she drank 3 glasses of juice and some water from her sippy. But she just wouldn’t go. At 6:20 when Matthew got home, Natasha was still sitting, still drinking, still asking if she can come off. I refused to let her off because I just know that the moment she comes off, she will go on the floor.

At 6:45 we had progress!!! Lots of cheering on, stickers and praise later she was one proud little girl. I still don’t understand what made her change her mind and actually give the potty a chance, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is that we are moving forward.

MORNING UPDATE

Right after breakfast this morning, Natasha went on the potty again. And… it only took her 45 minutes to go! AWESOME. Who knew potty training would be so exciting? That still sounds like a long time, but it’s a WHOLE HOUR less than yesterday. Maybe, just maybe we’re making progress!!!

Yesterday it finally “warmed up” enough for me to take the girls to the playground. We’ve been having some awful weather lately, and between that and the girls taking turns being sick, we had to stay indoors for weeks at a time. I think we all had some awful cabin fever.

They LOVED the swing! Natasha did not want to come out (actually threw a fit over it), and Veronika was falling asleep in it LOL. Veronika is easily rocked to sleep and I guess the swing did it for her (even a playground swing!)

When Natasha turned two years old, I figured it was time to start the potty training progress. That was five months ago and we’re still not potty trained at all. Not even daytime. In fact, it’s been one long and difficult rollercoaster and I have way too many mixed feelings on it all.

We started very slowly by introducing both the potty chair and her new Dora toilet seat. We introduced pull-ups and the whole “big girl” concept. Natasha appeared to be pretty open minded to the whole idea so we took it from there. She did not like the potty chair and preferred the seat. That was fine by us. For the following two to three months, I would have her sit on the potty several times a day, and even though it wasn’t her favourite thing to do, she never really resisted. Sometimes she would agree to sit for 10 minutes, sometimes for 45… she never went. But she sat, and that was progress in itself.

Well, being that after three months she still didn’t go, I was starting to think that maybe she wasn’t understanding the whole concept. Maybe she just didn’t understand what to do, what was required of her. We read books, watched a video, she had a potty for her panda bear. But it didn’t seem to change a thing. We were making no progress.

At that point I started getting “advice” from people. A few people I know (some friends and family and such) suggested that I go cold turkey with her. They told me that pull-ups are way too similar to diapers and are just confusing the child. They adviced me to go cold turkey. “Just put away the pull-ups and diapers and put underwear on her. When she goes in the pull-up, it’s no different than going in the diaper. The feel is the same. But if she goes in the underwear, she will feel the discomfort and that would make a whole difference. You will see. Start on Friday, and I guarantee you that by Monday she will be potty trained.” Sounds simple enough, right? Who wouldn’t want to wave the diapers good-bye? It just sounded so easy. It sounded almost too easy.

So I researched different articles online on potty training, and sure enough, many sites suggested doing just that. But just as many sites suggested taking the slow process – let the child guide you. Let the child decide when it’s time. You don’t make the decision, they do. If they resist, it means they aren’t ready.

I was torn. Which way do I go? The cold turkey process just seemed so easy. But then why was my gut feeling telling me it won’t work? And why did I not listen to that feeling? WHY?

So the following Friday morning I put Natasha into undies. I told her that diapers are for the baby and she’s a big girl now. She seemed cool with that. She liked her new big girl underwear with Dora on them and was really excited.

But then she had an accident. And that is when everything crashed.

Natasha was absolutely horrified. She did not ask, “what happened?” She did not seem confused. She did not even cry. Instead, she turned absolutely hysterical. She was sobbing, her entire body was shaking, she was terrified. She was crying so hard that she had difficulty breathing and almost puked. She was beyond herself. I’ve honestly never seen her like that before.

I did manage to calm her down. Explain that it’s ok. But it wasn’t okay. About 10 minutes later she had another accident… and then another. And each time she was an absolute mess of tears, sobs, shaking, not being able to breath. It was a complete nightmare.

Half way through that day, I was done. DONE.

By the next morning, Natasha let me know that she was done too. She wanted nothing, and I mean NOTHING to do with the potty. She won’t even sit on the darn thing. She won’t go anywhere near it. Forget Dora underwear. Forget panda stickers. Forget yummy cookies. Just forget it, mama!

Well, that was two months ago and we’re still at square one. I knew, I just knew this method will not work for her. Natasha is not your average toddler. She’s shown us over and over again over the last 2.5 years that she does not do things the way an average toddler would. Natasha is a very sensitive girl. She takes things very personally and gets upset and offended very easily.

An ex-colleague once told me how his almost 3 year old daughter was still not potty trained, and I remember thinking, “wow, that’s super late. Must be some lazy parents.” But now I know not to judge someone until you are in their shoes. I also learned to listen to my own instincts because “mommy always knows best”. I am going to take it very slowly with Natasha. I do hope that she’s potty trained before her 3rd birthday, but I will never do anything that will traumatize her like that again. Some advice is great, but some advice just needs to be put aside.

So almost everyday, starting at 5pm, Veronika goes through her “witching hour”. Or should I say… two hours? She fusses, whines, cries, wants attention, gets clingy and needy and won’t leave you alone for a moment. *gasp* I think Natasha was the same at this age.

Anyhow… Today at around 5 o’clock Natasha & I were in her room playing on the floor. Veronika heard us in there and started crawling over from the living room, down the hallway, towards Natasha’s room… while whining, fussing, etc the whole way there. When she reached the room, Natasha saw that her little sister was unhappy. She immediately got up, ran towards the baby, got down to her level and goes,

- Hi Nika! Hi Nika!
- Aw, what’s wrong? Are you scared?
- Does something hurt? Your head hurts? Aww…
- Do you want something to eat? Are you hungry?
- Aww, hi Nika! What’s wrong?

She kept repeating it over and over while stroking Veronika’s hair. It was the cutest, funniest thing ever. She’s such a little mommy to her! I felt sad that I couldn’t get it on video, it was precious.

Well Natasha is on her very 1st prescription of antibiotics. Yes, first one EVER.

A couple days ago she developed a minor rash all over her body which we chalked up to a food allergy, but weren’t really sure. The rash didn’t seem to bother her one bit and she was, for the most part, her normal happy self. But then yesterday and this morning she also developed a minor fever and the rash turned into some dime-size patches on her arms and thighs.

So I called her paediatrician's office this morning and asked the secretary to please squeeze her in before the weekend (we have a long weekend, too). So she did and it’s a good thing we went. She has Scarlet Fever which is essentially strep-throat with a fever and a rash. Her poor cheeks are covered in tiny little pimples. Her throat is inflamed. She also gave the poor doctor quite the hard time examining her – she screamed, kicked, pushed him away… I had to restrain her head and arms so that she could be checked.

I had to buy her the antibiotics plus the doctor also told me to give her lots of fluids, lots of honey, and lots of ice cream! I am sure she’ll enjoy the lots of ice cream part.

So if you can send us some get-well vibes, that would be GREAT!

Hopefully I won’t jinx myself by typing this out, but for the past two nights Veronika has slept through the night! WOOHOO. She slept straight from 7:30pm until 6:30am without waking up to eat. What awesome progress… She did wake up a couple times to whine, but it only lasted a few seconds before she drifted back to sleep. This has been wonderful, seriously… She takes 2 naps during the day and only drinks 3 bottles every 24 hours now. Such a good girl!

Speaking of bottles… yesterday I decided to slow start transitioning her to cow’s milk so that hopefully by the time she’s 12 months, she will be completely off of formula. I’ve been mixing her baby cereal with whole milk for the past two days and she ate it without any issues. Hopefully her stomach won’t get upset. Eventually I will start gradually adding milk to her bottles and mixing it with her formula, and slowly decreasing the amount of formula while increasing the milk… ANYHOW, we are 100% ready to stop buying formula at this point.

Veronika LOOOVES real foods (meaning not baby foods…). She will try anything I offer her and she can gum down anything with her 2 bottom teeth. Yep, she still only has 2 teeth, but she’s unstoppable when it comes to food. She gets very upset if she isn’t offered what we’re eating and will scream until we let her try it. The only problem is that Veronika thinks everything is FOOD. And if she sees it, she eats it. *sigh* I keep having to remind poor Natasha not to leave any small items within her sister’s reach and even though she promises that she won’t… well, she’s 2. She forgets. On several different occasions we’ve had to pull out elastic hair bands, stickers, and other small NON-EDIBLE items from the child’s mouth. Let’s just say she wasn’t happy…. :)

This picture makes me laugh :)
Natasha was being her helpful self, except she was a bit ‘too helpful’…
Poor Veronika almost tipped over!

Finally Veronika has figured out how to sit herself down from a standing position. I thought this day would never come…

Seriously though, I think Nika learned to pull herself up onto everything about 3-4 weeks ago and only yesterday have I noticed that she learned to sit down without smacking her face against something. Well either that, or yelling out for me to help her. She is getting so independent. Where did my baby go?

Way to go, baby!!

p.s. Laura, if you’re reading this – the purple onesie might look familiar to ya! ;)

Last night was CIO Night #1 (see my previous post for details). Matthew and I decided to stay in our room and just let Nika CIO instead of picking her up and attempting to feed her or carry her, etc. Well, she woke up numerous times last night but we just didn’t pick her up. Honestly, I have no recollection of last night at all, but according to Matthew, she was crying on-and-off for about one hour at some point. I don’t remember this. I just remember her standing up, sitting back down, etc. over and over. Falling back asleep, waking up, back to sleep, crying, waking up. And then it was 6:30am???

NICE. So she did make it through the night without eating. I knew she could do it. Babies don’t need their night-time feedings at this point. Tonight will be CIO night #2 so we’ll see how she does. But at least we’re making some progress here.

On a different note, Veronika had her 10-month check-up today. She’s doing wonderful.

She’s 19 lbs 10 oz (8.91 kg), 30.3 inches tall (77cm). She’s very tall for her age and the paediatrician said she’s much different than her older sister which is very true, since Natasha only weighed around 16 lbs at this age, but was even taller than Veronika. The bad news is that she has a minor cold. Sigh. We don’t have to go back until she’s 12 months at which time she’ll receive her vaccines.

Veronika has been sleeping awfully the past few nights. I don’t know what’s going on with her, but she keeps waking up multiple times a night and crying or fussying. I initially thought she might be teething again, but Tylenol won’t help her and Tylenol has always helped relieve her teething symptoms. So we’re really coming to the conclusion that she’s just waking up because she’s used to waking up.

This is all new to us because Natasha spoiled us silly and slept through the night by 5 months. Veronika is 10 months (TODAY!) and is still waking up. In my book, that’s unacceptable, LOL. And since she’s sleeping in our room, I know it’s hard on Matthew to go through these interrupted sleep sessions and still function and concentrate at work.

So what’s next? Well, we’re thinking CIO (crying-it-out). We CIO’ed with Natasha twice at two different time periods when she stopped sleeping through and it worked like magic – only 3 days later she was sleeping a full night again. It wasn’t easy, far from that. But it was SO worth it. The difference this time is since Veronika is in our bedroom, she can see us when she wakes up which will not work with CIO. So we might be spending a few nights in the living room to get her under control and sleeping. We haven’t decided yet, but we do agree that it needs to stop. I want her sleeping through by the time she’s one.

Wish us luck! And happy 10 months to my beautiful baby girl! Aside from your annoying sleeping habits at night, you’re a wonderful, happy, cuddly baby, and I really couldn’t have asked for anything else.