Potty training

Yet another one of those things that we've been procrastinating about - potty training for Faith.

We think she might be somewhat ready, but there's not much harm starting earlier and see how she takes to it. She doesn't always pull at her diapers but when it gets too heavy and is drooping, she would be pulling at it or alerting us that she needs a diaper change.

One day, her diapers got too heavy with pee and it dropped to the floor while she was walking around. My mom was hanging clothes in the balcony and I was somewhere in the house. Neither of us noticed that her diapers had dropped. Suddenly, we realised she was not in the living room and I started to go around the house hunting for her.

I caught her in her room, proudly pulling out and showing me a new diaper that she had gotten for herself. It was then that I realised she was without her diapers and she had gone into the room to get herself a new one.

According to my mom, she started training my niece, Nicole, around the time she was 18 months or slightly younger. My SIL said that her mom, who was then looking after Anthea in the day, started potty-training her after her 1st birthday.

I think now might not be a bad idea to start becos she's only going for two lessons a week until mid Dec, when all classes halt for the holiday breaks. Starting next year, Faith and I are going to be busy as she's going for lessons four times a week.

It would be harder then to potty train her. Since there's a little of a lull time during the year end, it would be good to get her started so that she might have a little more time to get used to it.

My mom was of the opinion that simplicity was best. The pink Ikea potty that we had earlier bought was deemed to be unwieldy for a kid as it had pointy ends. She felt that the old-fashioned, all-rounded potty that we get from the neighbourhood shops would stand up to the potty training better. So, we now have a blue, round potty sitting just outside our kitchen toilet. Most of the time. Occasionally, Faith gets it into her head to shift it around to somewhere in the house, most often the living room.

Last Monday, I thought to put her on the blue potty after she woke from her afternoon nap. Unfortunately, she resisted our attempts to get her to sit on it, despite us trying to tempt her with her favourite snacks like raisins or even a Ribena pastilles. She made lots of noises and struggled out every time we pick her up under her armpits to put her on it.

Of course, we gave up shortly. No point making it an unpleasant experience that she would remember and hence resist going through in the future.

Last Tuesday, while Louis and I were away for a CPR/AED training session in the day, Faith apparently managed to pee and poo in the potty. Unfortunately, that was the one and only time. She hasn't been too keen to go back into the potty since.

On Saturday morning, the only day of the week when Louis is at home in the mornings, he determinedly brought her to sit at the potty when she woke up. To entice her to stay seated on her potty, he sat in her pink potty, while she in her blue. The two of them sat there together for a long time with no results.

In the end, we ended up taking pictures and Faith stood up from her potty after a while and decided to pose for pictures next to the fridge. Sigh...

Meantime, I should stop procrastinating too and get myself to go read up some books or google online resources on potty training. Or better still... just hunker down with her and spend more time at the potty to get her use to the idea.