The Life and Times of Baby Gordon

Potty talk

A couple of months ago, Maddie started getting interested in what Daddy and I (and others, so I hear) do on the potty. She would come into the room with us and sort of watch shyly. Then she wanted to help flush, or tear off toilet paper. We started talking about pee-pee on the potty, and she was very interested.

Andrew went to Target one weekend (I believe I was home sick) and bought the least offensive toddler potty he could find -- it plays music when its sensors sense something wet. (The others talked and shouted and spat out stickers, all too creepy for his taste.) We decided to at least have the potty in the house so we could start talking about what to do with it.

First, Daddy showed Maddie the music feature by using a bath toy to pour water into the bowl, which prompted her to want to put "agua" in the potty and splash around in it every time she came into the bathroom. We finally broke her of that habit. Then we asked if she'd like to sit on it. So she began raising the lid and sitting down on it fully clothed.

But when we asked if she'd like to take off her pants and diaper and make a pee-pee in the potty, she has always said with great gusto: "No!" A couple of times when I tried to place her bare-bottomed on the potty, she has whined and fussed and resisted. So we've just been letting her warm up to the idea.

In the past couple of weeks she has been bringing her "babies" into the bathroom, setting them on the potty, then tearing off tiny squares of toilet paper and "wiping" them. She often ends the routine by shoving her more flexible stuffed animals and dolls down into the potty and closing the lid on them. (Maybe that's what she thinks is going to happen to her.)

Only a few days ago, we finally got her to sit without pants on the potty. It didn't last very long, and I think she was a little freaked out by the whole idea. The funny thing is that I know she knows what to do; she's just not really interested in doing it yet.

The beauty of small sentences

Maddie will turn 21 months on Saturday. She's talking like crazy -- something that start shortly after we got back from vacation.

Most of her communication is in single words, but we've been noticing that lately she's started stringing words together to convey more complex needs. This morning she did one that blew my mind.

Our routine after Maddie wakes up is to have a bottle in Mommy and Daddy's bed, then get dressed and go to the kitchen to fix yogurt for breakfast. The getting dressed/changing diaper part usually upsets her along the way, possibly because she's just ready to go and I'm holding her back, so she cries bitter tears. I usually end up carrying her into the kitchen because she's sulky.

This morning I set her on the counter and opened the cabinet where we keep her dishes and cups to get a bowl for the yogurt. She looked into the cabinet and said, "Duckie. Duckie." (I thought she was saying "doggie" at first.) "What doggie honey?" I asked absentmindedly.

She pointed at the cabinet and said: "My duckie cup, agua." Sure enough, she has a plastic duck straw cup in the cabinet (which we rarely use). I grabbed it, put some agua in it, and she drank enthusiastically.

We've come a long way from pointing and whining!