Potty Progress

A couple of weeks ago I ordered some cloth training pants for Joseph to wear at night. Mary recommended them since they were working well for Jonathan and Bridget and they certainly were reasonably priced. I ordered three pair, thinking that should get me through my usual diaper washing cycle.

Well, when they arrived I was shocked at how enormous they were! I put them on Joseph, with a premium sized cloth diaper stuffed in the pocket, and they were still ridiculously and hilariously gigantic. I was out of disposable diapers for him and we figured we didn't have much to loose except for maybe clean sheets, so we put them on him and sent him to bed. Incidentally, he really liked them and thought it was quite fun to be wearing them.

The next morning, Joseph woke up dry. This had been happening about once a week already. The next morning, he woke up dry again. And again. Eight nights in a row! Then he finally had an "accident" and the training pants didn't contain anything and all his sheets had to be changed. Oh well. Since the training pants weren't doing their job and Joseph had such a good dry streak, we decided we might as well put him to bed in his underwear. And he's been doing great! I think he had one more night a few days later where he peed in bed, and another one where he only peed a little - enough to make his pajamas wet, but his bed didn't feel wet. Some nights he wakes up to go potty and some nights he ostensibly sleeps through without needing to go. It's been about 2 or 2.5 weeks since he's not worn diapers at night. Now I am just wondering how long ago I could have ditched the diapers if all it took was to simply stop putting him to bed in them!

Simon is also progressing in his pottying. It was around 18 months of age when Joseph no longer wore diapers at home and he stayed dry with regular potty visits. So I figured maybe it's time to be a little less lazy about my ECing with Simon (I am WAY WAY more slack about it than I was with Joseph.) Each morning, Simon dutifully marches over to the potty as soon as he crawls out of bed. He often wakes up with a dry diaper. But I have to move fast! By the time I am pulling back the first piece of tape on his diaper, he's ready to let go, so sometimes we get some trickles on the mat. I'm acting on my potty thoughts more often, which are usually right and catching more pees in the potty. Simon is also communicating more clearly about his pottying needs and certainly understands the whole concept, but I don't he's capable of holding it really at all. There have been several times where he has walked into the kitchen carrying a little potty, announcing "eere - eh - iz!" ("There it is!"), by which time his diaper is already wet. I then take off his diaper, he sits on the potty for about 10 seconds and then runs off to play again. (Me chasing after with a dry diaper.) Sometimes he comes to me, waves his hand (signing potty); I ask him if he needs to go potty and he goes running off in the direction of the bathroom or a potty so that I can help him go. He seems able to give me a little more lead time with poops and I usually know when to expect them, so the majority of those are all in the potty. We do disposables at night and no nighttime ECing except a handful of times when Simon was fussy and restless and it seemed like going potty was what he needed (9 times out of 10 in those situations, it was.)