Tuesday, July 26, 2011

5 steps forward and 1 step back...

So we had a wet bed last night...oy!

She told me that she woke up and and "forgot I got my bedsheet back and thought I was still sleeping on the plastice", as if THAT was ok...to pee on the plastic. I explained to her that it wasn't so much the bedsheet, but that peeing in her bed was just not ok! That mommy and daddy don't do it and neither does Tyler! So she continues and demands that I just give her her pull up back. "Just give it back to me!" she says.

I ask, "and how long do you plan on wearing pull ups?"
She answers, "I don't know"
"Well none of your friends wear them, so how will you explain this to them?"
"I just wont' tell them, I'll lie and say I don't wear them."

Just like that. She will lie and say she won't wear them. Where did this girl come from?! How does she figure all this out??? and how much of it do I need to tolerate?! For the love of god already!

I had set my alarm for 1230AM like usual and she peed all over herself early! at 1130pm! she's early! she's not suppose to pee at 1130PM! what is she doing?! So when I was chatting with her about it this morning, she had the audacity to accuse me of not waking her up! I said Madison! I had my alarm set for the regular time! YOU were early! and why can't YOU wake YOURSELF up?!? MY mother doesn't come over to wake ME up to go to the bathroom! Are you serious?!? "Oh, well just give me my pull ups back!" I informed her that all that hard work has to start all over again. She got angry and informed me that I was wrong. She will challenge me the whole way. I know some of you may think that I should make the goal shorter so that she can easily attain it, but you have to know the history of this child. We have been down this path many times and unfortunately easily attainable goals will not help her. Thats what getting her bedsheet, her babies back were for...the big prize will require more work from her. She's a big girl now and I will not baby here and blame it on "trend."

I'm thinking...although it could backfire if she is stubborn enough, to say ok fine, you can have your pull ups back. However if you wear them to sleep you have to wear them to school too. Let's see how that sits with her....

Monday, July 25, 2011

And We Have Success!!!

Right when I thought there was no hope...we are on day #8 of having a dry bed!!!! After morning after morning of her waking up with a wet bed and losing the priviledge of sleeping with her "babies", her bed sheet, her comfy blanket, and the total loss of her body pillow she has finally found success.

I finally found a bit of a pattern...although I realize that our summer hours are way different from school hours so we shall see if this is for real when school starts...but this is what I did. She would go to bed at like 9 or 930PM and I would wake her at 1230AM to go potty. She would fight me to wake up and stomp down the hallway, bang on the wall to turn on the light and the whole way to the bathroom she would insist that she does not need to pee...then we get there she sits down and pees like a race horse...that's my girl!

So we started off with me waking her up at 1230 am and then again at around 330am and then we sleep until she wakes up. The last 2 nights I woke her up at 1230am and she went and she slept all the way through without wetting her bed. Last night I did try to wake her again at 330am but she was so exhausted she couldn't do it...just wouldn't budge, so I left her in bed. I'm so obssessed with this task that I myself have been having dreams and I think maybe even walking in my sleep and going into her room and making her go to the bathroom! I think now thta she's had so many dry nights she has her confidence built up and that helps. Her goal is 10 before she gets a toy. I'm going to let her reach 10 before we take the next step where I don't wake her and she has to do that on her own.

I know she's "only 6" and the "trend" now is that kids are older before they are completely trained, but I still think that's a load of crap. It's an excuse. I'm not saying I'm better, because look at me sitting her with Madison who is going on 7. For me a lot of it I think is because I such an easy time with Tyler and I got lazy. Well part of it is lazy and part of it is exhaustion. Having twins is definitely not easy and those without twins but with more than 1 kid doesn't have it easy either...so maybe not so much lazy as it is more like "running out of steam." When I was younger and in those years kids got out of diapers faster...but many moms didn't work. They had the time and energy to get everyone trained. Life was also much easier those days. So this business "trend" business I think is bogus, I think we need to call it what it is...we just haven't had the time or energy to get our kids trained. No shame to that.

So I think for us moms, cuz let's face it, unless you are a single dad, the moms are doing this, so for us moms WE need the motivation to get our kids potty trained. It's exhausting! and if we stop and "let it go tonight" we have screwed up all our efforts from the days or weeks prior. So all of you moms and dads out there trying to do this you have to stay consistent! Or you start all over...it's just like that house of cards...everything will just topple over! I know many moms are frustrated out there...just as I was...but you know if you are not ready to do it don't pressure yourself or your child. One thing that I think really helped Madison too is that she had gone through a year of kindergarten. I know I don't want her to be a victim of peer pressure, but this was necessary. So I had a talk with her and just casually informed her that all her bestest friends are all out of pull ups and I knew that in 1st grade that there will probably be sleepover parties and I wasn't sure what to do because SHE was still in pull ups and I didn't want her friends to know. That really struck home with her. She really tried hard and still is trying. So all you moms before you start this try and get some rest and prepare for a lot of erratic sleeping!!!

Let me know how you do!!!

Monday, July 18, 2011

My Poor Wet Little Girl...

I know she is trying. I also know she wants to. She just can't wake up dry. She also can't get herself to wake up when she needs to go. I set my alarm to get her up in the middle of the night and yet she STILL manages to wet herself. The other day she says to me "just give me my pull ups back!" My daughter is persistent. I know she is just waiting for me to give up and give her those pull ups back...but I just won't do it.

I now have her sleeping on just her mattress cover with only a baby blanket and a pillow. She has ruined her body pillow which I was so not happy about and I have taken away her "babies" that she sleeps with. She has been attached to those babies since birth! I thought for sure that those babies would be the ones that would do her in...nope! I also took dessert away from her. The first night I took it away her father decides to give it to her anyways. I told him that he better get up to clean up her mess in the middle of the night because I am exhausted! He agreed and said that taking her dessert away was not going to help. So here's how that night rolled out...

4am...Madi comes in..."Can I change?" Kevin, "Madi! Are you serious? Again?! you said you would get up and go to the toilet!" gets up and gets her new clothes. Now I'm awake and listening to all this. He comes back. I ask, "Did you clean off her bed?", "yes", "really? did you just dry it off with a towel or did you clean it with a wet one?" He gets up with a grunt and goes to the bathroom and gets a wet towel to clean her mattress cover and dries it off again. Then he gets back into bed and I'm lying there wide awake and he seriously starts snoring! I watch the sun come up again!!!

I just don't know what to do! I tell her that I love her. I want to help her. She is going to the first grade and soon her friends will want to do sleepovers and what will she do then? She can't go in her pull ups! She's tough. She puts up a front like she doesn't care but i know that deep down she does. She cares a lot.

Most kids don't like to feel dirty...especially when they get to this age when they know what it is and how gross it really is! She can't stand dirtiness...that's what I don't get. Knowing that something dirty is near her grosses her out...yet she is ok sleeping in her peed on bed. In my delirium when she has come in to tell me she is wet I have told her to go back to sleep and she has! In her wet clothes and bed!

I refuse to buy an alarm to hook up to her underwear. I don't know how old she will be when she is finally trained overnight...but my suspicions are that when she is finally trained it might be time for me to get into some Depends!

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

The Search for a Dry Pull Up Continues...

I am on a mission to get Madison off the overnight pull ups once and for all. Last night she went to bed at 930PM. She went to pee at 9PM and then before we went to be at about 11PM we took her again. She actually DID pee! So I thought ok, her bladder is empty. We had stopped liquids early that evening, but being summer we have to be careful with that since it IS hot outside I don't want her dehydrated either.

I had taken away her big comfy comforter and did not let her have a pull up. She had started to cry. I wasn't sure why she was crying. Perhaps the fear of knowing that she will wet her bed. So I told her that we both know that SHE knows when she is peeing in her sleep and she just needs to get up and go. I had also given her her little lady bug emergency flashlight, so that she can use that to come get me to go with her to the bathroom if she is afraid of the dark. Not to mention the extra night light I put in the short hallway to the bathroom.

At 430AM, she came into my room to get me, she had wet herself. So I got up she got changed, I took off her bedsheet and now she gets to sleep on her plastic matress cover. She will not get another bedsheet until she has a dry night. She slept until 9am today...she's NEVER slept so late in her life! I guess getting up in the middle of the night takes a lot of her. So she asked me while she was washing up and brushing her teeth if she gets her pull ups back tonight. I told her no and she was not at all happy. I told her that she is going to the 1st grade and that no one wears pull ups in the 1st grade! She has to learn to wake up and go to the bathroom. So she said nothing and accepted this.

Sleeping on a plastic covering just can't be comfortable! I know that personally I would hate to sleep with a pull up on, or to sleep on a piece of plastic! How can she be ok with it? I can't even stand having my period and having to sport a maxi pad...I just don't get it. I've tried the reward system, bribery, you name it and I've tried it. Now it's just plain it JUST DO IT! I'm adopting the Nike logo. I feel like I'm doing the midnight feedings again with the waking up in the middle of the night, but we need to get out of these pull ups! So come hell or high water...or perhaps my death...she will get out of these pull ups before school starts!!!!

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Whatever happened to simple?

I guess I've always known this, but it really has hit me that our world is just crazy...really crazy. Whatever happened to simple living? Our children can't even enjoy simple lives of just going out and playing outside without the need of having all this different equipment and that is because we have built them to be this way. We want them to be exposed to all these activities, baseball, soccer, basketball, etc and so now we go outside and just playing on the playground is "boring."

How about their diets? With the organic craze and kids who will "only eat organic." Chicken just isn't chicken anymore, it needs to be the organic, non-antibiotic chicken...what?! What in the hell IS that? and why would kids even know the difference?! HOW would kids taste the difference?! I'm gonna have to say the kid with that kind of palate should probably go work for Gordon Ramsay!

Then we have their schooling. I mean honestly. The pressures some of these parents put on their kids is ridiculous. I mean this is only what I am seeing in the kindergarten level! ok so if they are not reading Harry Potter yet by the time they get to 1st grade...it's OK! I'm praying that my kids can still remember how to spell their names and read ANYTHING when school starts again in the fall! Kids are thrown into all these enrichment courses after school to help them move ahead with their academics...whatever happened to a simple childlife?

Let's move onto potty training. I am still battling the overnight training with Madison. She is now 6 going on 7 in November. I am just on the edge of jumping. She tells me this morning that she actually does know when she is peeing in the middle of the night but she is just too tired to get up. So I go and finally google the alarms I've heard about. Honestly! Really?! Alarms?! Now we have to buy alarms to clip onto her underwear to wake her up to go to the bathroom? why?! our parents didn't have to do that with us! Why is it so normal now that there is a market for this alarm?!? it just puzzles me...I just don't get it. I can not allow myself to go there. So my next tactic. Complete uncomfortableness. Tonight she will sleep in her underwear and pajamas. I will take her bedsheet off and she will sleep on the plastic bed cover that is on her mattress. That's it! That piece of plastic is so not nice!!! Also, since she is so tired to wake up in the middle of the night when she needs to pee I will put her into bed when it is still light outside. If this doesn't work I may need to move her onto the bathroom floor...