Potty Pains

This is a shout out to all those parents trying to get their children to use the potty. Emerson has been at it for proabably 5 months - he'll be 3 years old in November. Now before you go and judge me as his primary potty trainer. I will tell you what I have tried. I have tried the routine potty visits every 1-2 hours - didn't work he and I were in tears by the end of each day. I have tried the big boy under wear - same as a diaper in his opinon. I have also tried the bare bum method - most successful here but we run into problems when we are out of the house and have friends over to play. The one thing I have not tried is the reward method. I was hoping I wouldn't have to bribe him to go potty but I'm thinking that this is my only other option.

We talk about going potty a fair amount. I tell him if he wants to go to school and do big boy things he has to learn to pee and poo in the potty but he doesn't seem to care. In fact he rarely, if ever, will tell me that he needs his pants changed - we usually smell the evidence and then he flat out denies that there's anything in there. So the question I keep asking is: Is he ready?? Well this morning I think I got my answer.

We always go potty first thing in the morning, it's kind of a rule/routine. He usually protests but we go anyway. So this morning he must of been super hungry cause he says to me: "I'm hungry mama". So I say: "Alright lets go potty and then have breakfast". And he replies: "OK! Lets go... no wait... I do it... OK?" And before I can even pull myself out of the bed he has run to the bathroom, closed the door and locked it behind him. I proceed to hear the struggle of him trying to get his pyjama bottoms and diaper off. We can hear him muttering and humming to himself. And then to my amazment I hear the tickling of pee in the pot. Then he knocks on the door to get out because he hasn't yet figured out how to open the door he locked. I jimmy the door open and he exclaims: "I did it! I went pee!". Sure enough he did do it - all by himself!! So he's ready, right? That means he's ready, right? I just need to be more firm or diligent or whatever it is that parents are, that have 2 year olds potty trained. Right??

To be honest I'm not sure what to think - he was on a "I do it myself" kick today. While getting ready for church he had to put his tie on himself - thank goodness it was a clip-on. He had to pour the juice himself - mommy convinced him to let her help. He had to put his shoes on himself - despite the fact we were running late and didn't have 10mins to wait for him.

I guess time will tell. People keep telling me that: "boys are harder to train than girls" or "there's just a switch that goes off and one day they'll be ready". It seems like a longer process than I thought. Wish I could somehow make the switch go off somehow. For now I'm trying to keep the pressure off us both and just gently persuade. Hopefully that switch will go off soon.

Small Town Days

I think every small town here in southern Alberta puts on a weekend of events. Most I think are called __________ Days (fill in the blank with name of small town). Well we got to experience our first "Langdon Days". It's a town wide event that involves a parade, pancake breakfast, lots of loud bands that play late into the night and fireworks. All our neighbors have told us about it since we moved in May and we were excited to see what it was all about. We attended the parade which was fun. Lots of cars, horses, candy and water guns. Emerson loved it! Funny story - we walked down to the main street with our camp chairs for the parade only to come home and have our neighbor tell us that the parade goes right down our street past our house - guess we'll know better for next year! We also went for the pancake breakfast at the outdoor arena - not bad. We skipped out on the kids-carnival, as it was held in the afternoon and we were already hot and tired from the parade and breakfast - can't do it all when you're 2 years old. Although we decided that Emerson is "old enough" to experience his first fireworks. He loved them in his own 2 year old - cover his ears the whole time type of way. He talked about them for the next 3 days, so he must of enjoyed it - he probably also enjoyed staying up till 11:30pm :)

We also attended Nanton Days. Another small town about an hour away from us. Nanton is well known for 2 things: their
bomber command museum and their candy store. So of course for our family Nanton is the ideal Saturday day-trip. Part of Nanton Day's was turning on the engines of the old WW II Lancaster Bomber at the museum. Dean was thrilled - pretty cool to watch! Of course we stopped at the candy store and got some ice cream to help us cool down, as it was a very warm day.

It's been a nice relaxing summer for us so far. We took Em camping for the first time too- I'll save that for another blog entry.

Here are some pics of Langdon Days... I'll add the pics of Nanton Days later (really sunny day, so they need some touch ups):